


The Chivalric Ideal

by Claranon



Category: Dragon Quest Series, Dragon Quest XI
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Hendrik Suffers 2019, Just for old times' sake, Light Dom/sub, Post-Canon, Power Play, Spoiler alert Hendrik is madly in love with his wife, Yeah I know I'm shocked too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:27:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21648286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claranon/pseuds/Claranon
Summary: Foremost knight of Heliodor, hallowed saviour of Erdrea, and husband to the divinely beautiful Princess Jade—Sir Hendrik’s life is, in every respect, unimaginably perfect....that is, until the night his wife turns to him with the fateful question: “Have you ever thought about taking the lead more in the bedroom?”
Relationships: Graig | Hendrik/Marutina | Jade
Comments: 14
Kudos: 46





	1. A Knight's Word

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Flutiebear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flutiebear/gifts).



>   
>    
> 
> 
>   
> Me: I will never write established relationship fic  
> Flutiebear: hey wouldn’t it be fun if Jade asked Hendrik to try being a top in bed?  
> Me: I will write one (1) established relationship fic
> 
> Love you to pieces, lady. <3

In every moment leading up to the fateful question, Hendrik could easily have said that he had never been more perfectly happy in his entire thirty-seven years of life.

He lay sprawled out on a luxurious four-poster bed staring unseeingly at the ceiling above him. The gentle stirrings of midsummer’s eve drifted in through the open window as he struggled to calm his ragged breaths and racing heart. Tucked securely into the crook of his arm was the most beautiful, strong, _sublime_ woman that had surely ever existed; even now, these three months after the joyful day where they had pledged their hearts and souls to each other, he could scarcely wrap his mind around the wonder of it all.

“Hendrik,” his wife—his _wife_ —said quietly. Her head lay upon his chest and she idly brushed her fingers over his pendant, a habit she had fallen into when they lay together in the afterglow of their lovemaking.

“Yes, Jade?” he asked. The feel of her name on his lips was yet a novelty he relished.

Her absent tracing continued as she spoke on in a calm voice that did not in _any_ way presage the calamity about to befall him: “Have you ever thought about taking the lead more in the bedroom?”

His eyes, half-shut in drowsy contentment, snapped open. “What?”

“I was just thinking that it might be nice if you tried showing a trifle more...dominance on occasion.” Still maddeningly composed, as if she spoke merely of the weather and not in censure of what he had until that moment _thought_ of as their domestic bliss. “Not _all_ the time, of course, but for a change of pace.”

Hendrik’s heart began to pound again for a much more dismaying reason than minutes before. “I...I do not...” He swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat. “Is there...some way in which my performance has failed to please you?”

Jade’s hand fell to his chest as she shifted and propped herself up on her other elbow. Her eyes were dark in the dim lighting of the room but he could see the tenderness within them.

“No, of course not,” she assured him, and he let out a breath he had not even known he held. “I would have thought the _three_ _times_ you brought me to climax tonight would be proof enough of that.”

A wicked gleam then entered her gaze and her lips quirked into a smile. “But sometimes a lady just wants to be _ravished_ , you know—especially by so fine and powerful a knight as the one I married.”

“Oh,” Hendrik said, slightly breathless. His thoughts had caught on the word ‘ravished’ and suddenly swam with a sea of frankly _bewildering_ images. “Had you...anything particular in mind?”

Her mouth curved downwards. “It sort of defeats the purpose if I have to _tell_ you how to do it.”

His wife’s pouting lips looked so appealing that he could not resist leaning over to press his own against them. Her eyes had turned soft once more when he pulled away.

“Forgive me,” Hendrik murmured, more for his discomposure than for the kiss. There were many actions that he regretted in his life, but embracing her could never be one of them.

Jade smiled again and he felt his chest tighten at her loveliness. “It’s all right. I _did_ spring it on you without any warning. And goodness knows we’ve rather settled into a certain...dynamic with our relations.”

After a moment’s thought, Hendrik could readily agree with her assessment. Though he would not characterize himself as a _passive_ participant in their physical relationship, there was no question that the princess’s enthusiastic and forceful nature combined with his eagerness to serve had resulted in a more singular direction of control when it came to intimacy. It was difficult for him to find anything wanting with the daily—or frequently more—occasions where they lay tangled both in the sheets and with each other; but clearly she had realized some source of dissatisfaction, and it was his duty as her sworn knight _and_ husband to attend closely to her words.

“If you would but clarify your meaning,” he said with all possible earnestness, “I will attempt most ardently to devise a solution to your present unhappiness.”

“Well...” Jade leaned back into a stretch as she thought about that, and Hendrik was momentarily distracted by the sight of her magnificent breasts thrusting out towards him. Improbably, given the passion of their recent activities, he felt his cock give an interested twitch.

The impish glimmering had returned to her eyes when she continued. “I was thinking something like...your being so overcome with desire for me that you simply _must_ have me right then and there, no matter what I’m occupied with.”

“But that is how I _always_ feel, my love,” he replied, his hand curling more firmly around her waist and pulling her closer.

She reached up to tweak his beard. “Charmer. I’d like you to _act_ on it, though. Or how about demanding what you want from me without a thought for my own needs?”

He gaped at her. “How could I _possibly_ in good conscience ever act in so unchivalrous a manner?”

“It’s not unchivalrous if I _want_ you to, is it?” she pointed out.

“B-Be that as it may—”

“ _Or_ ,” Jade cut in, a fresh crease between her brows, “making love to me somewhere we’re at risk of getting caught and ordering me to keep quiet?”

“Princess!” he protested in a strangled voice, shocked to his very core. “The scandal that would erupt if we were to be discovered is such that I cannot even begin to—to—”

She sighed then and turned away to flop onto her side of the bed. “I was worried this might all be a bit beyond you, Hendrik. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything—please forget about it.”

An instant rush of remorse shot through him at the defeat he heard in her voice. Was he not a soldier who had faced down the most malevolent forces the world had ever seen with steadfast companions at his side? Did his vows of knighthood not compel him to submit to the whims and wishes of the royal family whensoever in his power? Had he not promised to always cherish, love, and obey this remarkable woman he now shared his life with?

“I will _not_ forget,” Hendrik declared, his voice ringing through the quiet room. “My sworn wife and future queen has brought before me a request most reasonable and just, and I shall see it through to the best of my ability.”

There was a rustling of the sheets as her head turned toward him again. “Are you sure?” she asked a bit doubtfully.

He grabbed one of her hands and pulled it to his lips. “As I draw breath into my lungs— _this_ I vow to you.”

Jade’s eyes searched his for a moment. He was nearly overcome with relief when she shifted and returned to his side, snuggling into him once more.

“Thank you, Hendrik,” she replied. Her voice took on a tone of faint amusement. “Though in the future, I don’t exactly _need_ all swearing and declarations and whatnot. A simple agreement will suffice.”

“A force of habit,” he conceded. “I will...attempt to curtail such behaviour going forward.”

He could feel the curve of her lips on his chest as she smiled. “That’s all right. I think I like you best this way, after all.”

Her hand left his own to slide down his stomach and his muscles instinctively flexed beneath it.

“Now,” Jade whispered, a wealth of promise within that puff of air against his skin, “you aren’t _terribly_ sleepy just yet, are you?”

“Not terribly,” he gasped, arm tightening around her. His erection was rapidly growing from ‘mild interest’ to ‘fervent enthusiasm’ with every brush of her teasing fingers on his waist.

The princess slung a leg overtop his and pulled herself up to straddle him, her long hair spilling down onto his chest in a way that had his back arching. “Good,” she said in a low voice. “Because I’m not anywhere _near_ done with you, Sir Knight.”

Then she kissed him, and the rest of the evening was lost to delirious pleasure before they both collapsed into well-earned rest.

* * *

What had been so easy to swear in the dim vagueness of night took on an entirely new cast in the morning. As soon as Hendrik awoke to dawn’s faint light, his mind seized with the enormity of the stern duty that lay before him. He attempted to marshall his thoughts toward the day’s schedule as he dressed for morning drills, but it was impossible to focus for long; the word ‘ravished’ seemed to buzz around in his head like a particularly determined bumblebee.

Before Hendrik left, he returned to the bed with its still-dozing occupant. He pressed a gentle kiss to his wife’s hair and smiled at her mumbled farewell. This served to calm his anxiety somewhat; if he but kept her and her desires at the forefront of his mind, surely all would fall into place.

Unfortunately for the knight, the universe seemed almost eager to conspire against him. The deplorable laxity of the troops that morning forced him to remain on the parade ground as they repeated their exercises twice over, causing him to be late for his appointment with the captain of the guard. When he attempted to make up time during his ride with Obsidian, he took an ill-fated shortcut that had both himself and the horse stumbling into a bramble patch. The indignant reproach of his mount was no less than his own severe self-censure; he gritted his teeth and thought darkly on the inconvenience of a horse who refused any touch but his master’s as he brushed and untangled that glossy coat back in the stables.

Giving up his intention of a visit to the armourer, he had been about to join his wife for their daily training session in the courtyard when a page found him with a summons from the king. His liege wished to confer on matters of Jasper’s replacement, and Hendrik was unable to tear himself away until nearly suppertime. As he left the audience chamber, Jade finally caught up with him.

“There you are,” she said with a smile that seemed expressly designed to lighten all his burdens. “I haven’t seen you all day.”

“It has been an unusually irksome one, Your Highness,” he confessed with a sigh. Despite her strenuous protests, they had reached a grudging truce on matters of proper address in public spaces.

“So I’ve heard.” She hooked her arm through his and began to walk along with him down the hallway. “I tried to tell my father that your meeting could wait, but you know how stubborn he gets sometimes.”

Hendrik’s back straightened. “It is my foremost duty as king’s knight to respond attentively to my liege,” he stated with an unnecessary staunchness.

“Yes, Hendrik, everyone knows,” Jade replied, her eyes rolling affectionately. “But it’s _also_ your foremost duty to attend to your wife, isn’t it? And right now she’s ordering you to take off your armour and join her for a quiet meal in our chambers—just the two of us.”

He blinked in confusion. “Are you certain you do not wish our normal course of dining with your father, Princess?”

“Absolutely certain. I even asked the cook to prepare a quiche just for you—with extra mushrooms.” Her nose wrinkled with distaste. “I’ll stick to the regular kind, myself. I don’t know how you can stand the things.”

Hendrik was at once overwhelmed by his wife’s thoughtfulness, insight, and solicitude—as well as her beauty, just for good measure. A wave of guilt swept through him at the realization that he had made no further progress toward fulfilling her request that day. His steps halted so suddenly that she was jerked back by their linked arms and looked up at him in surprise.

“I wish you to know that I have not forgotten what you have asked of me,” he told her seriously. “Nor do I consider it with any less import than my other sworn duties as your husband. Pray, give me yet more time, and I shall not disappoint you.”

Jade’s delicate eyebrows pushed together before relaxing again. “Don’t worry about that,” she said with a small smile. “I know it’s been quite a day for you, so let’s just rest tonight. You said you’d let me borrow that book on Drustan you keep raving about, didn’t you?”

What had he ever done in his life to deserve such mercy as this—especially in the form of a strong, capable, intelligent, _beautiful_ woman whom he still could not dare believe he had wed? Hendrik made himself a vow right then and there that he would let nothing—not even a righteous calling from Yggdrasil Herself—stand in the way of realizing her every dream and desire.

Then he hesitated, thinking of how utterly delightful the quiet evening his princess proposed had sounded. The morrow; he would let nothing stand in his way on the _morrow_.

“I would truly like nothing better,” he told her sincerely, and the answering curve of her lips was enough to banish the last of his cares and concerns.

At least—very nearly.

* * *

Though not the tactician or scholar his late comrade had been, Hendrik had not risen through the ranks without cultivating a painstaking orderliness to his methods. To that end, he made certain of a free hour in his schedule the following day for the purpose of mapping out his campaign.

He sat at the desk in his former quarters—now repurposed as his study—with a quill in his hands and a blank piece of parchment before him. A brief hesitation, and then he wrote:

_Interrupt the princess during a moment of preoccupation._

Hendrik frowned down at the sentence, as if his dubiousness could somehow rearrange the words in a manner that would please him. After another pause, he continued.

_Demand what I wish from her without first attending to her own needs._

The frown deepened. Truly, he could not comprehend how he might possibly be inspired to fulfill such a request. But she _had_ mentioned it in particular, and so—

He was about to write further when his quill stuttered to a halt. The near-blankness of the page loomed in front of him, as if breathlessly awaiting the array of shocking and outrageous ideas that his wife seemed so determined to have him pursue. If luck were at all on his side, then there would be no need to continue past what he had already put to parchment. But if it were not...

At the last moment, Hendrik moved all the way to the bottom of the sheet and wrote with a trembling hand:

_Initiate marital relations in such a place as to put us at risk of discovery._

As soon as he had completed the sentence, he tossed his quill on the desk with a shudder. Surely he would be able to satisfy her every desire well _before_ it came to that point; and if any further insight struck, he had ample room to fill in the remainder above. He sat back in his chair and stared as intently at the still-drying words as he had any plotting of battlefield maneuvers.

He was a general of Heliodor with a newly-devised strategy for action. Now, all that was left was to set it in motion.

* * *

A quick word with the princess’s secretary informed Hendrik that she had set aside some time in the afternoon to fulfill her obligations of correspondence. So much the better: Jade had shown a marked preference for the desk within her chambers, citing the peacefulness and solitude as conducive to writing. If all went well, it was mere feet from there to the bed with all its promise of pleasure and intimacy.

At the appointed hour, Hendrik strode up the Banquet Hall staircase to the royal bedchambers. He had determined to continue directly to her quarters while his resolve remained high, but he instead found himself stumbling to a halt when he reached the landing.

Even aside from the usual guards, the hallway above seemed to practically _teem_ with servants and members of the nobility at their various duties. Worse, Hendrik had neglected to consider the effect the king’s weekly public audience had on the flow of traffic within the castle: merchants and townspeople milled about in front of the throne room doors, casting interested glances around them.

For a single, horrified moment, Hendrik nearly abandoned the venture altogether; but then he recalled his princess’s smiling face and her gentle consideration of the night before and some of the steel went back into his spine. He was a sworn knight of Heliodor with every right to visit his wife within her private quarters, and woe to _anyone_ who dared suggest otherwise.

He marched over to the ornate door and exchanged a curt nod with the guard outside, attempting most earnestly not to meet the man’s gaze. His hand raised for an automatic knock before he recalled Jade’s words. Would a man ‘overcome with desire’ wait politely for permission to enter? Or should he better march in as if consumed by his eager passions?

Hendrik agonized over this decision for an interminable five seconds, his fist hovering in the air. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the guard glance at him curiously.

His jaw set and his hand dropped instead to the door handle before pushing it open. He had no sooner entered the room than he spotted his wife—sitting not at her desk but in a chair by the small table with a cup of tea in her hands. One of the large screens had been set up to block the remainder of the table from view, where presumably the tea service sat. Her startled gaze had flown to his and he was struck all over again at her surpassing loveliness.

With a shove of his boot, the door slammed shut behind him. Hendrik took in a deep breath and straightened his shoulders.

“Jade,” he declared in a strong, clear voice, “my ardor can be repressed no longer. I must have you this instant, and I care not what objections of pursuit or propriety you may voice.”

It was a speech he had practiced most diligently and he had, in truth, no small amount of pride in the composure of his delivery. Why, then, should his wife be staring at him with a look of such sickly chagrin on her face? His heart froze within his breast at the possibility that he had somehow gravely misunderstood her meaning.

After a tortuously long moment, she spoke. “Hendrik,” she said in a voice marked by strain. “You remember Dame Garnet, don’t you? My former governess?”

The sudden change in subject threw Hendrik into a state of confusion approaching bafflement. Was this her attempt at a compassionate rejection of his proposal? Perhaps a harsher rebuke would follow at a later time, after she had better gathered her thoughts together.

“I...do,” he replied slowly. “She was also my own tutor for a time in my youth. But, I do not understand what—”

“She felt so badly about missing the wedding that she decided to come for a surprise visit,” his wife cut him off. “Isn’t that lovely?”

Jade gestured with her teacup toward the unseen end of the table. Hesitantly, his stomach dropping precipitously with every movement of his muscles, Hendrik leaned over to look behind the screen.

Dame Garnet sat across from the princess with her own cup in her hands. Her iron-grey hair was pulled back as severely as he remembered it and her clothing just as thoroughly starched. Her eyes glittered as they bore into them over the small spectacles that lay perched on her nose; just the sight of that glare brought phantom pains to his hands, in memory of countless punishments for his indifferent devotion to academics.

Fortunately for Hendrik, his lessons in _courtesy_ had settled so deeply as to be able to assert control in the event of a complete failure of sensibility. “D-Dame Garnet,” he stuttered as he jerked into a bow. “We are—we are exceedingly honoured by your presence.”

The older woman snorted and took a sip of tea. “Sir Hendrik. I must say that it is almost... _heartwarming_ to see that married life has consumed the remainder of what little sense you ever had.”

Jade offered her a wan smile, while Hendrik attempted to determine which of the room’s two windows he could most expeditiously fling himself out of.

“Well,” the dame continued in her creaky voice, “seeing as I have inadvertently intruded upon your afternoon’s plans—”

“No!” Both women’s gazes flew back over to him and Hendrik hastened to modulate his voice. “No, I—I—in actuality, I have an appointment to...to see a man about...a sword. If you will excuse me—”

After another quick bow to the dame—and one also to his princess, just to be thorough—Hendrik fled the room. The guard outside jumped as his commander stumbled through the door and bent over at the waist to catch his breath.

“Sir Hendrik? Is everything all right?” the man asked in concern.

“Yes,” Hendrik gasped. “Perfectly well.”

One more long, shuddering breath and then he straightened. He fixed the guard with a steely look and the man practically quailed where he stood.

“In the future,” Hendrik said sternly, “if the princess finds herself with company, then it is your duty to ensure that none should interrupt her. Do I make myself clear?”

“But—but sir, I thought that with your being—well, her husband and all—”

_“None!”_ Hendrik barked and the guard’s heels and hand snapped into a shaky salute. With a final nod, the knight stalked off to the staircase once more. Servants and nobility alike practically ran from his path, confirming at least that his _own_ continued tremors were properly concealed beneath his scowl.

His wife found him some time later in his study where he sat upon the couch with his head in his hands.

“I’m so sorry,” she said as she rushed to his side and wrapped a comforting arm around his shoulders. “I’d no idea she was coming today—I would have warned you if I had.”

“It was no fault of your own,” Hendrik said with a great sigh. “I should better have confirmed your solitude beforehand.” He lifted his head and looked at his princess, choosing—for the sake of conjugal felicity—to ignore the glimmer of amusement he suspected lay behind the concern.

Jade studied him a moment before a small smile came across her face. “Well, despite the unfortunate timing, I have to admit I _was_ rather impressed by your boldness.”

“Pray, do not compel me to summon any more such audacity for the remainder of this day,” Hendrik begged, letting his head flop back over the edge of the couch in despair. “I fear I left it in tatters on the floor of our bedchamber.”

A soft hand reached up to caress his cheek and he automatically pressed his face into it. “I won’t, I promise,” came her reassuring voice.

The hand then slipped to his neck and she urged him back up to meet her gaze. A teasing look had entered her eyes—a _very_ familiar one that immediately sent his pulse thrumming.

“I was thinking instead that we haven’t made use of _this_ room in quite a while,” she whispered. “It was here that you first let me go down on you, remember?”

“How...how could I ever forget?” Hendrik sucked in a sharp breath as the princess’s other hand went to his trouser laces and began tugging them loose. He was distracted from his avid observation when her mouth captured his own with a heated kiss. He moaned helplessly at the feel of her tongue stroking against his.

“Do you fancy recreating some memories, Sir Hendrik?” Jade breathed against his lips.

“Yes,” he choked out. She gave him a heart-stopping smile before starting to languidly kiss her way down his neck, her fingers busy at his waist.

As it turned out, it _wasn’t_ exactly as he remembered it; it was oh so wonderfully _better_.

* * *

Hendrik pursed his lips as he stared at the sheet of parchment in his hands later that evening. Then he set it down upon the desk and carefully drew his quill across it.

~~_Interrupt the princess during a moment of preoccupation._ ~~

It was true that the failure of _one_ such attempt did not mean the idea necessarily discarded; but he had an inkling that his princess desired some measure of novelty and surprise in his methods, and he would not wish to disappoint her through repetition. His eyes narrowed as they shifted to the next item on the list:

_Demand what I wish from her without first attending to her own needs._

Though a seemingly simple endeavour, Hendrik could not fathom a scene where such selfish behaviour would come naturally to him. Perhaps an opportunity would present itself in due course—or, failing that, he might yet be struck by further inspiration in the meantime.

He refused to look at the sentence resting with such deceptive innocuousness at the bottom of the page. Regardless of anything else, he would not allow himself to be forced to resort to such scandalous design.

He would _not_.

* * *

To Hendrik’s surprise, circumstances aligned more fortuitously than he could ever have imagined.

He opened the door to the courtyard the next afternoon to find his wife busily engaged in her warm-up drills. He saw the muscles of her arms and abdomen flex as she repeatedly pushed herself up off the ground in a handstand and then lowered again. It was an exercise she had favoured ever since their rigorous training in Angri-La during the course of their quest.

A smile came across his face as he recalled her reaction when _he_ had attempted the feat, and had subsequently tumbled into a sprawl of limbs on the Field of Discipline floor. That was the first time he had ever heard her laugh in adulthood, and he cherished the memory of that enchanting sound.

“Are you just going to stand there admiring me or are you ready to spar?” Jade asked without looking at him. Her face was yet unmarked by strain, but several beads of sweat trailed down from her chest.

“I see no compelling reason why I cannot achieve _both_ aims, Princess,” Hendrik replied. His pack went to the ground and he dug his leather gloves out of it before walking over to the equipment rack. “Do you have a preference for weaponry?”

She pushed up into one last handstand before gracefully letting her long legs fall as she righted herself. Hendrik watched with keen interest as she adjusted her tank top where it had ridden up high on her stomach.

“Not really,” she said with a frown, joining him at the rack. “I was thinking I’d just stick to kicking today, actually.”

“A respectable choice.” He thumbed through several of the wooden practice swords before selecting one and hefting it in his hands. “By your leave, then.”

They both moved over to the sparring ring and made their last preparations and adjustments before facing each other. Neither had much need for preamble by this point; these regular training sessions were one of the highlights of Hendrik’s day, and he mourned the loss whenever their schedules could not permit the time.

Jade launched herself at him with a great kick and the clattering of her boot against his sword echoed throughout the courtyard. Her long hair twisted around herself as she spun and Hendrik scrambled to counter her followup attack before lunging with one of his own. She blocked it easily and flashed him a tight grin before ducking underneath his arm and darting behind him in hopes of catching him unawares. He managed to wheel and parry in time, but only just.

The near-daily occasions they had to spar together had mitigated most of Hendrik’s advantage of years and training, and he was forced to rely more on his strength to counter her agility. His princess had soon achieved a reliable record of _two_ wins for his every three, and he was filled with endless pride and admiration of her indomitable spirit.

“What was that appointment you had with the farrier this morning?” she asked breathlessly, thrusting her foot out so rapidly it almost seemed to blur in the air.

Hendrik braced himself on his heels as he blocked her attacks. “Obsidian has favoured one of his hooves of late, and I”—a grunt when one of her blows scored true—”I wished to inquire as to a replacement set of shoes—”

She nodded and attempted a leg sweep that caused him to stumble before he righted himself and counter-attacked with an overhand slash.

“I saw your lieutenants Agate and Quartz sneaking off together in the gardens before I came here,” his wife continued even as she dodged nimbly out of the way and spun to face him once more. “How long—how long has _that_ been going on?”

Hendrik blinked and almost absently tried to trap her foot between his sword and arm before she twisted and pulled free. “I...had not an idea of it,” he admitted between panting breaths. “They had always seemed close, but—”

Jade rolled her eyes and then flew into a roundhouse kick. “I’m starting to see why I had to—practically hit you over the head to get anywhere with this, Hendrik—”

He parried the attack and ducked his chin into an apologetic bow. “It _did_ turn out a most effective strategy in the end, admittedly—”

Perhaps it was not the _usual_ way a married couple caught up on each other’s days, but Hendrik and his wife were in many cases far outside of normal parameters. They danced around the courtyard together as he inquired about her meeting with the ministers and she ranted about tariffs and tax law, her kicks becoming proportionately crisper with her annoyance. They traded blocks and counterattacks as he detailed his concerns about the quality of incoming troops now that the monsters had by and large vanished from the world. They came to an agreement on when best to schedule the supper invitation they had received from Lord and Lady Pyrite even as they grappled for the upper hand in the centre of the sparring ring.

But eventually, as almost always happened, a silence descended upon them as they each turned their full concentration towards the outcome of the match. Hendrik pushed back his sweat-damp hair and gripped his sword tightly, warily eyeing his princess in hopes of determining her strategy before she unleashed it. His heart pounded in his chest and his breath came in laboured gasps from the exertion of the fight.

Jade looked no less strained, but there was a calculating gleam in her eyes that he mistrusted. She dashed to one side and paused just long enough for him to commit to a lunging thrust, before she feinted and leapt onto his unguarded half with a triumphant cry.

Hendrik, however, had grown wise to her tricks and was prepared for this. He leveraged the thrust into a spin and met her foot with his blade just before it connected. The two caught together and the momentum of her kick sent both her and her knight tumbling to the courtyard floor. He only barely managed to keep from crushing her as they rolled and stopped, her back hitting the stone and he half-sprawled atop her.

His chest heaved as he looked down at her and struggled to catch his breath. His wife was the very picture of winsome dishevelment; something about the way she was gazing up at him with hooded eyes, her own breath panting through her bewitching lips, sparked something deep, hungry, and _feral_ within him. An intoxicating surge of triumph coursed through his veins and he felt his cock begin to harden within his trousers.

She tried to push him off and let out a startled gasp when Hendrik grabbed her wrists in each of his gloved hands and pressed them to the floor beside her head. He leaned down, relishing in the sight of his formidable princess helpless before him, and stopped just a hair’s breadth away from her mouth.

_This_ was the scene that he could not conceive of in the firelit glow of his study. What could be more natural in the aftermath of battle victory than to demand satisfaction from his opponent? His pulse pounded in his ears and he felt a shivering tingle as her breath puffed across his lips.

“You have met with overwhelming defeat by my hand, Princess Jade,” he said in a low rasp, “and now I shall claim my—”

It was _precisely_ the wrong thing to say. His wife’s competitive nature—always heightened to a fever pitch in the sparring ring—asserted itself at the worst possible time. He saw her eyes narrow dangerously.

“Oh, _have_ I, Sir Hendrik?” she asked with a certain ominousness. “Then I suppose there’s no harm in my trying— _this!_ ”

Her powerful legs wrapped at once around his waist and she leveraged every last ounce of her strength into a twisting flip. Caught off-guard, Hendrik was unable to muster any defence and in the blink of an eye found his own back slamming down to the stone floor. Jade climbed atop him and straddled his chest, pinning his arms to his sides with her knees.

“Dear me—it seems the tables have now turned,” she declared triumphantly.

The sight of his alluring wife above him—eyes shining, sweat dripping down her face, thighs pressed against his torso—was too much for Hendrik to handle. All predatory instincts were sapped away in an instant, and he could think only of how urgently he wished to cover every inch of her skin with feverish kisses.

It seemed her thoughts ran along similar lines. She leaned down to whisper in his ear and he shuddered at the feel of her hot breath on his flushed skin. “I want you between my legs the instant we’re back in our room, Hendrik—and you aren’t allowed up for air until I’ve come at _least_ twice.”

“I—I am yours to command,” he gasped out.

* * *

~~_Demand what I wish from her without first attending to her own needs._ ~~

Hendrik leaned back in his chair, a pensive frown on his face. As failures went, this certainly had unfolded with much more satisfaction than the _first_ one; but still he had come no closer to achieving his goal, and he felt the gnawing anxiety of it clenching within his chest.

His eyes flicked down to the bottom of the page then back again. Tomorrow he _must_ needs devise some new stratagem, or heaven help his soul with the consequences.


	2. Exceeding Limitations

Inspiration came in a most unusual—and unpredictable—form.

He was in the barracks the next morning performing his weekly inspection of the troops’ living arrangements. Trainee knights cringed away from their commander’s criticism of their laxity and untidiness, and his scowling face was no less terrifying than the harsh censure of his voice.

“Under whose tutelage were you taught to fold a sheet in so disgraceful a manner?” he demanded. “And with what mistaken guile did you assume I would overlook not only one, but _three_ missing clasps on your armour?”

The young man before him mumbled a stuttered apology that only served to increase the knight’s ire.

Hendrik grabbed a dog-eared book from the bedside table and waved it in the air. “Do you think it a right and not a privilege to be able to seek reading materials from the castle library? With how shockingly poorly you have treated this, I have half a mind to—”

He was interrupted by the sight of a slim magazine falling out from between the pages of the book and fluttering to the floor. There was a collective gasp from the room followed by deafening silence as Hendrik slowly crouched down to retrieve it. He turned it over in his hands as he rose again, his brow furrowing as his eyes swept over the front cover.

After a long moment, Hendrik looked up. The trainee was rooted where he stood, the blood drained from his face and his eyes filled with dread.

Hendrik’s mouth opened. Then it closed again. He glanced back down at the magazine before returning to the trainee.

“I...shall be confiscating this,” he said in a distracted mutter, his hands clenched tightly on the glossy pages. “In the future, see that you do not...do not leave such materials...”

All of a sudden, he straightened. “I would have you all at your morning arms practice!” he barked to the room. “Dismissed!”

There was a buzz of activity as the trainees scrambled to vacate the barracks. He could hear their chattering as they went, confused voices peppering queries at each other as to how they—and especially their unfortunate comrade—had possibly been granted such mercy as this. The young man in question seemed almost unable to keep his feet as he staggered through the doorway in relief.

As soon as they were gone, Hendrik cast a furtive look about the empty room before he tucked the magazine beneath his tabard and strode off through the opposite door with grim resolve.

Once safely in his study, he sat down at his desk and pulled the magazine out. It could have been any one of a hundred copies of _The Ogler’s Digest_ that he had perused over the years before his marriage: the same bright logo, the same vivid patterns, the same buxom cover model. This last he avoided scrutinizing too closely, not wishing to skirt any closer to a betrayal of his vows than he already had by possessing the prurient periodical in the first place.

No, Hendrik’s interest lay not with the comely figures inside—who certainly held not a candle to the staggering beauty of his own wife—but with the promise emblazoned in bold lettering on the front:

**HOT Tips to Dominate Your Dazzling Dame!  
** _Everything YOU need to know to have her begging for more! (pg.14)_

He was intimately familiar with such articles from past readings, of course, and possibly had even seen one much like it in a previous year. He recalled the avid attempts of his youth to commit the lurid suggestions to memory should the opportunity ever arise to put them to practice. It never _had_ , as it turned out—until now.

After taking a deep breath, Hendrik pried open the bottom corner of the magazine and carefully thumbed through to the correct page. The fact that none was there to observe him meant nothing in comparison to his own strict sense of proper behaviour. Jade was generally the very model of compassionate understanding, but still he felt it wise to avoid even the appearance of ignominious indulgence; the Princess of Heliodor’s husband must be above reproach.

Glossy page now open on his desk, he eagerly began to scan the list displayed against a cheerful backdrop of red hearts.

His lips curved into a frown.

A crease came upon his brow.

His eyes narrowed and then widened.

He sucked in a sharp breath.

Hendrik slammed the magazine shut and held it closed with trembling hands. There was no question now that he had committed grievous error in even the _thought_ of its being useful to him. Surely—surely he had not grown so desperate as to resort to any such brazen, unseemly, disrespectful—

His gaze cast down to his desk drawer where a piece of parchment lay within, only one sentence still un-crossed upon it. He swallowed hard.

Sending up a quick prayer to Yggdrasil to grant him strength in his time of trial, Hendrik flipped _The Ogler’s Digest_ back open, retrieved the sheet from his drawer, and began to write.

* * *

“What’s that you’ve got there?”

Hendrik’s hand froze in the act of closing his door and he whirled around toward the voice. Jade was standing in the hallway across from his study looking curiously at him.

“I—that is—it is not—”

Hendrik’s heart thudded in his breast as he made a futile attempt to conceal the magazine behind himself. He had _thought_ her safely at an appointment with her seamstress, giving him ample opportunity to steal over to the kitchens and burn all traces of the salacious periodical within the enormous cookfires. It was true that he had his own fireplace within his former quarters, but he had not dared risk even a stray fragment escaping from the ashes.

It seemed instead that his prudential decision had altogether backfired upon him.

The princess’s eyes narrowed. Before he could react, she darted forward to snatch the magazine from his helpless hands. She turned it over and smoothed out the cover. “Now let’s see what—oh.”

Her expression was inscrutable as she looked up at her husband. “Well, that’s...not quite what I was expecting.”

Hendrik’s mouth had run as dry as the Gallopolitan desert. He struggled manfully to swallow before finding his voice. “I...I had confiscated it earlier from the barracks, and merely wished to...to...please, you must not think...”

“Confiscated, eh?” Still that unfathomable look on her face as she pursed her lips and studied the cover model with a scrutiny that made him begin to feel quite faint. “That’s rather hypocritical coming from a man who must have had _dozens_ of these stashed away in his youth.”

“Your Highness—” he protested weakly.

Jade rolled up the magazine and tapped it thoughtfully against her cheek. “I’d think instead that you could hold yourself up as an _example_ to your men: that no matter how voraciously they consume such scandalous materials, they can still attain the rank of general and marry the princess they’d sworn to protect.”

No longer able to bear the ordeal that comprised his very existence in the world, Hendrik covered his face with one despairing hand.

“Though if you won’t do it, I could always ask Rab to come,” his wife continued mercilessly. “He’d be only too delighted to wax on about all things _Ogler’s Digest_ to the next generation of noble knights. We _do_ want to ensure they grow up properly, don’t we?”

Hendrik’s skin felt so entirely aflame that he had not a doubt of his ability to dispose of the magazine himself by that point. “ _Princess_.”

He felt a firm touch on his arm and let the hand jerk down from his face. Jade’s eyes were full of laughter and her delighted smile was almost enough to banish his prodigious humiliation.

“Oh, I’m only joking,” she told him. “Here.”

She offered the rolled-up magazine back to him and he took it gingerly, as if not entirely certain that she had not somehow booby-trapped it while in her possession.

“I need to rush to an appointment with the seamstress, so I’ll see you later.” She lifted up onto her tiptoes to give him a peck that he automatically returned. With one last smile, she turned and started down the hallway.

Hendrik let out a long sigh. He curled the magazine up tightly in his fist and was about to return to his study—fragments in the ashes be _damned_ —when his wife spoke again.

“Not that I really think of it as a competition, but...” He turned to see her biting her lip as she fiddled with the sleeve of her dress, her gaze uncharacteristically vulnerable.

Jade drew in a breath. “There’s nothing in there that I should be concerned about, is there?”

“No!” He took a reflexive step forward in his eagerness to reassure the impossibly captivating woman with whom he shared his life. “No, I—there exists not a person in this world who could command my attention a fraction so well as you. I swear it.”

“Good.” Her lips curved upwards and she tilted her head at him. “Keep it that way.”

Hendrik knew that he had no need of solemn vow or promise to ensure the continuance of such an abject truth. As he watched the flames lick over the glossy pages in his fireplace, he could think only of two things: his fervent hope that the freshly-copied list in his desk drawer contained ideas enough to finally please her; and his relief that she had been so preoccupied with teasing him that she had not even bothered to _read_ the cover of the magazine.

* * *

_Who DOESN’T like to be told how beguiling her bountiful bosom is? Write a STEAMY letter to your lovely lady and watch as she practically MELTS into your manly arms!_

The first suggestion seemed innocuous enough, but Hendrik blocked off the entirety of his next free morning in the event that unforeseen complications arose. He had informed Jade that he had matters of crucial correspondence to attend to, which was near enough to the truth to assuage _most_ of his guilty conscience.

For the second time that week, he found himself sitting at his desk staring down at a blank piece of parchment. His fingers drummed distractedly on the wooden surface; too much to hope that the article had had any further insight as to how one might _compose_ such a letter as they described.

Picking up his quill and dipping it in the inkpot, he wrote:

_To Her Royal Highness Princess Jade of Heliodor,_

Hendrik frowned, wondering if the formality might be an impediment to the intention of his missive. Crossing that out, he replaced it with:

_To my sworn wife Jade,_

Another frown. Perhaps _too_ informal?

_To my dearest love,_

That felt appropriate to the occasion. Address decided upon, he was now faced with a dilemma as to the opener. The suggestion had said ‘steamy’, which he could only interpret as ‘libidinous’. In his entire life, the closest Hendrik had ever come to such a subject were letters concerning his putting Obsidian out to stud in his youth; he doubted very much that _that_ experience would be of assistance here.

He set down his quill and settled back in the chair. What pleased him most about his wife? Her valour and determination came immediately to mind, but those hardly seemed suitable for the task at hand. It was somehow monumentally difficult to turn his thoughts in a more lustful direction when sitting at the desk where he occupied himself with official state business.

Hendrik’s eyes landed on the couch in the middle of the room. He thought back to the other day when the princess had insisted upon reenacting scenes from their courtship. A flush came over his face and he felt a tightening in his trousers at the memory of her wanton behaviour. That certainly seemed a promising enough place to start. He cleared his throat—several times—and leaned back over the desk with quill in hand.

_To my dearest love,_

_~~The purpose of this letter is~~ _

_~~I ardently beg for a moment of your time so that I might~~ _

_Allow me to dwell most fulsomely on how eternally ~~intrigued~~ enchanted I am by the sight of ~~your alluring eyes~~_ _~~your shapely legs~~ your ~~bountiful~~_ _~~generous~~ bountiful breasts. They are perfectly formed and of an exact shape and size to fit within ~~the impressively large decorative chalices used for formal~~ my hands. You cannot begin to ~~comprehend~~ imagine my delight and even, I dare say, my ~~concupiscence~~_ _~~amativeness~~ arousal when I caress their velvety softness and ~~pinch~~_ _~~pluck~~_ _~~manipulate~~ tease your bewitchingly rosy nipples. I find myself quite overwhelmed by even the thought of the thrilling manner in which you ~~unleash~~ perform your puff-puffs, ~~so unlike any of the others I had previously~~_ _~~so unlike any I could ever in my wildest dreams~~_ _~~so unlike anything that I, a man heretofore unfamiliar with even the concept of puff-puff,~~ and yearn most desperately to feel your ~~torso~~ body against mine once more._

Hendrik laboured long that morning, expanding and revising and agonizing over the letter until it reached a state he could look upon with no small measure of pride. Once edited to his satisfaction, he painstakingly copied it out on a fresh piece of parchment and allowed that to dry while he crumpled up the drafts and tossed them into the flames of the fireplace behind him. Afterwards, he rolled the missive up and affixed it with his seal before rising from his seat with the aim of finding his maid.

Almost as an afterthought, he grabbed several other finished reports from his desk that he intended for the king; similarly rolled and sealed, he was exceedingly careful to keep them separate from his princess’s letter.

He found his maid folding linens in the hall closet. “I have correspondence of the utmost importance for you to deliver,” he informed her.

“Of course, Sir Hendrik!” she replied, bobbing into a curtsy. “I’ll get them out straight away!”

The knight handed her the reports. “These are for the king, containing crucial information pertaining to state business.”

Hendrik then coughed and passed over the letter. “And this is for Princess Jade—ah, _also_ containing crucial information pertaining to...to state business.”

The maid gathered the rolls of parchment up in her arms and made him another curtsy. “Don’t you worry, Sir Hendrik—I’ll have them delivered just as soon as I’ve finished with the laundry.”

The remainder of his day was spent in a state of simmering tension. He could not determine whether he looked upon his reunion with his princess more with anxiety or excitement. At last he had fulfilled her request in a manner suitable to his talents and would soon witness the result. He became so preoccupied with his idle thoughts of how she might react—with varying degrees of clothing removed from her imaginary person—that he entered entirely the wrong room for his afternoon meeting, and was forced to stammer out a thousand apologies to the group of tittering ladies that comprised the castle knitting circle.

When his obligations were finally dispatched, Hendrik made a short side trip to his study to ensure the seemliness of his appearance before practically flying up the Banquet Hall steps to the bedchambers beyond. His knock was answered with an affirmative and he pushed open the door with a trembling hand.

He was immediately disappointed to find Jade sitting at her desk scrawling unknown words on a piece of parchment. She seemed deep in concentration and paused only to flash a quick smile at him before returning to her work.

Hendrik slowly removed his cape and folded it over the couch. He started over to the sideboard to procure a glass of water, changed his mind and spun in place, then returned again to gulp down the entire cup in one go. It did little to assuage the frantic pounding in his ears, but at least it gave his hands some occupation while he waited.

After an eternity, Jade stuck the quill back in the inkpot and turned to him.

“Hello,” she said with affectionate warmth in her voice.

Although always glad to see his wife’s breathtaking smile, this was _also_ not precisely the reaction Hendrik had been hoping for. He unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth and made an attempt at a reply.

“Hello,” he returned hesitantly. “I...trust you have had a pleasant afternoon?”

“Mostly,” she sighed, leaning on the back of the chair and cupping her chin in her hand. “I’ve let my correspondence lapse for too long, and more always seems to pile up in the meantime.”

Hendrik’s chin jerked into a nod. “Ah. Yes, that is...how it often happens.”

Her brow furrowed as she watched him fidget with his gloves. Summoning every last bit of courage he possessed, Hendrik took in a deep breath before he spoke again: “Have you...have you perhaps had a chance to read my letter?”

A slight frown came across his wife’s face and his stomach roiled with unease. “Yes, I did,” she replied dubiously.

“Oh.” It suddenly seemed too monumental an effort to even _breathe_ let alone speak, but he grimly pushed onward. “And what did you—I had wondered if—might I...ask your thoughts?”

Jade paused, and within that pause every hope Hendrik ever had of his ability to satisfy his wife crumpled and burned to ashes.

“It was very...thorough,” she ventured.

Hendrik’s hands were clenched so tightly into fists that he was beginning to lose feeling in his fingers. “I see.”

His princess brushed her bangs back from her face. “And the opener was fairly attention-grabbing, I thought.”

“I—I had hoped that it would be,” he mumbled, his eyes dropping as he found himself no longer able to meet her gaze.

“But I was a little confused about—well, the point in sending it to me,” she continued. Her careful manner seemed expressly calculated to spare his feelings from her _true_ thoughts about the letter; Hendrik could appreciate that compassion in her, even as her disapprobation felt not unlike knives stabbing at his very soul.

Now thoroughly demoralized in every possible sense, he swallowed hard. “There...there is no point to explain,” he said hoarsely. “I merely thought that you might...that this would...rest assured that I shall trouble you no further on the matter.”

Hendrik glanced up at her as he turned to see her with the missive in hand, holding it out to him. He frowned in confusion.

“You should probably take it,” she told him. “I think my father will at least want to have a look.”

The knight jerked back, aghast. “Y-You wish your _father_ to see this, Princess?!”

Jade’s exquisite brows pushed even more closely together. “Well, he is the one with the final say about overseas troop stationing, isn’t he?”

This took the span of several seconds to register within Hendrik’s addled mind. “I...beg your pardon?”

His wife waved the letter in the air, as if hoping to jostle him into some semblance of coherence. “This troop stationing report, Hendrik,” she said slowly. “I think you should probably show it to my father instead of me.”

Hendrik accepted that his general sense of acumen was not one of his more sterling qualities, and had long grown accustomed to compensating for this lapse in the course of his duties. Not quick to make discovery _or_ decision, he had instead concentrated his training on the swiftness with which he might carry out his response. Aside from a few notable exceptions, this singular focus had served him well in his career.

And it was _precisely_ that which spurred him to action as he wheeled in place, wrenched open the door to the room, and sprinted across the hallway even as he heard Jade calling his name behind him.

King Carnelian looked up in surprise as his knight burst into his quarters without so much as a ‘by your leave’. He sat upon the sofa with a pile of correspondence and a service of tea on the table in front of him. Hendrik’s frantic gaze immediately zeroed in on the rolled-up parchment in his liege’s hands, the seal just freshly broken.

“Hendrik, what is the meaning of this indecorous interruption?” his king asked with a frown. He almost absently began to unroll the letter as he spoke.

“Y-Your Majesty!” Hendrik choked out with one hand outstretched. “That letter—you must not—”

The king’s beard bristled as his frown grew even more severe, an occurrence that on any other occasion would have Hendrik falling to his knees in apology. But now, the knight could only watch in helpless horror as his wife’s doting father smoothed out the parchment and began to turn his head toward it.

The very idea was so unsupportable as to go against every rule of chivalry and decorum that Hendrik had ever learned. Propriety be damned, he simply _had_ to act.

He lunged forward and grabbed for the letter in his king’s hand. His excitability had given his movements more power than he had intended, however, and the momentum put him in some danger of falling entirely against his liege’s frail person. Desperate to avoid knocking into the man, Hendrik attempted to jerk backwards with the parchment now safely clutched in his grasp. He might even have succeeded, if not for his banging into the table and shattering the tea service, spilling the scalding liquid over the entirety of the king’s correspondence— _including_ the letter that he had put such diligent care into.

The scolding that Hendrik subsequently received from the king was nothing in comparison to his chagrin as he held the dripping parchment in one limp hand, the words smeared into unintelligibility. He endured his liege’s harsh rebukes without comment; not even Jade’s alarmed inquiries when she rushed into the room could rouse him from his dismayed stupor. This was the hour of his disgrace, and Hendrik accepted it with all the stern resolve of a knight.

Later, upon cornering his maid in the hallway, she practically overflowed with apologies and excuses.

“Oh, Sir Hendrik, I truly _meant_ to keep them separate, but I had myself a little tumble as I was leavin’ and they must’ve gotten all mixed up!”

Her anxious eyes were trained on his. “It—it wasn’t too much of a bother to you, I hope?”

“No,” he found himself saying tiredly, his shoulders slumping. “No, I...suppose it did not matter, in the end.”

At least that was what he _attempted_ to convince himself of—and perhaps, given enough time, it might even begin to feel true.

* * *

There remained only one path forward, and Hendrik marched along it as a man determined to face his doom with head held high.

* * *

_Did you know that EVERY winsome woman has a SECRET erogenous zone just below the nape of her neck? Sneak up on her and push FIRMLY on it, then enjoy the rewards from your grateful gal!_

“I’m so sorry,” Jade earnestly assured him in the courtyard the next day. “Some instincts are a little hard to let go of. Try to warn me you’re there next time, all right?”

Hendrik nodded faintly, the excruciating pain in his jaw seeming somehow to linger despite his Midheal. “Yes, I...I shall endeavour to do so in the future.” ~~~~

* * *

_~~Use an EXOTIC ACCENT to keep her on her toes! Order her around in SEDUCTIVE Sniflheimian or DOMINEERING Drasilian, or even better, speak only in HOTTO HAIKU!~~  
_

_~~Two words: HOT WAX. Bust out the candles and the Wizard's Staff and heat things up in MORE ways than one!~~ _

* * *

_Has she been a NAUGHTY girl? Show her who’s boss by inflicting some PUNISHMENT on her delectable derrière!_

Jade squirmed on his lap before him, her fingers digging into the sheets. “Well, General Hendrik?” she asked breathlessly. “I’m ready for your _strict_ disciplinary measures.”

Hendrik swallowed around the dryness in his throat as he raised his shaking arm in the air. He hesitated for a single heartbeat, then let his hand descend upon her astoundingly well-shaped backside.

There was a sharp crack in the air and his wife let out a low cry. Hendrik stared down at the throbbing red mark that lay on her flushed skin, his stomach flipping restlessly.

“F-Forgive me, Princess!” The room lit up with a bright flash and then the mark disappeared as if it had never been.

After a pause, Jade twisted around in his lap and propped her head up on her hand. “Perhaps...hitting isn’t really your thing,” she suggested.

“No,” Hendrik agreed fervently.

* * *

_~~Nothing spreads a lady's legs faster than a HERO! Bring her along to a DANGEROUS district and enjoy as she clings to you in fright!~~ _

_~~What’s a BETTER way to ensure obedience than to treat her like a loyal PET? Buy a collar (make sure it doesn’t clash with her shoes!) and tell her to wear it—or ELSE!~~ _

* * *

_TEASE her mercilessly until she’s at the brink of screaming pleasure again and again, but DON’T give her the ultimate satisfaction until YOU’VE gotten YOURS!_

Hendrik struck a line with his quill and then paused. He thought back over the events of the evening, counting his failures carefully in his head.

He meticulously crossed off the sentence three more times before dropping the quill and burying his face in his hands.

* * *

_~~Get out the Goobricant! Just ONE TASTE of this exciting extract is enough to turn even the FIERCEST sabrecat into a PURRING KITTEN!~~  
_

_~~It’s NEVER a bad idea to let her know you keep your options open! Call her by the WRONG NAME in bed and watch as she works TWICE as hard to win you back!~~ _

* * *

_Want to spice things up even MORE? Try role-playing! Priest and penitent, teacher and student, or even Erdwin and Serenica! The possibilities are ENDLESS!_

Hendrik nervously adjusted his helmet as he waited for his wife to return to their bedchambers for the evening. His exposed limbs and abdomen felt disquietingly cool in comparison to the heavy red armour that lay upon the remainder of his body. It felt almost a lifetime ago that he had last worn the outfit; but then, so also did the previous _month_ feel to him, as upended as his life had been since that momentous question.

The door handle jiggled and he immediately pulled his thoughts together. His hand curled around the hilt of his sword and he straightened in place.

Jade slipped into the room and shut the door behind her. She still wore her formal gown from supper and fine jewels glittered at her ears and throat. She made as if to speak before she looked up and blinked in surprise.

“Well, this is...different,” she said, sounding not a little intrigued.

Hendrik cleared his throat. “I had thought to ask if you wished to join me in a...dramatic exercise.”

A smile curved upon her lips as she languidly approached, gemstones flashing in the firelight.

“And I take it you’re assuming the role of Drustan in this...exercise?” his wife asked him.

He coughed into his free hand and nodded. “Exactly correct.”

Jade hummed and let her gaze travel the full length of his body in a manner that had his cock stirring underneath the leather skirt at his waist. “I see. Very impressive, Sir Drustan.”

She reached out one hand and lightly brushed her fingers along the muscles of his bare stomach; Hendrik’s breath sucked in sharply even as she leaned in closer.

“And what role am _I_ to assume?” she whispered against his cheek, the heated puff shooting straight down to his growing erection. “A grateful damsel in distress recently rescued from a dragon? The generous puff-puff girl our hero visits to sate his noble desires?”

“I...” Hendrik valiantly attempted to reassert control over both the situation _and_ his own body; a monumental effort when his wife’s tempting lips lay mere inches away. “I thought that...we could perhaps devise a scenario reuniting Drustan and the mermaid.”

Jade’s hand paused on his abdomen. “The mermaid?”

“Yes—as from that book I lent you.” She did not answer immediately, and Hendrik hastened to clarify: “Drustan’s beloved whom he was forced to leave underwater, having failed to procure her hand. Do you...not recall?”

Still his princess remained frozen before him. Hendrik looked to her with some apprehension and was astonished to see tears in her eyes. “Jade? Whatever is the matter?”

She drew back and wiped at her face with one hand. “I—I’m sorry,” she said in a choked voice. “It’s just...the idea of hopeless love between man and mermaid is a difficult thing for me to...”

At Hendrik’s urging, they sat upon the edge of the bed and he held her hand as she tearfully recounted the tragic tale that she and the party had come across in Lonalulu. He had known that _some_ sad event had taken place there before he had joined as their comrade, but none had ever wished to tell him and he had not pried. He could only despair of this occurrence now, aghast at how inadvertently insensitive he had been to his beautiful wife.

“Forgive me, please,” he begged her when she was finished. “I—I had not an idea of it.”

Jade gave him a watery smile. “It’s all right—you couldn’t have known. But...” Her eyes were red and vulnerable and his heart broke a thousand times to see it. “Could you hold me? Just for a little while?”

The smile grew slightly rueful. “Perhaps _without_ all the armour,” she added before he could speak.

They lay for a long time together in the bed, his wife curled into him as Hendrik held her wrapped in his arms. When they did make love later on, it was gentle and sweet and filled with every apology he wished to say but could never put into words.

She laughed at her foolishness the next day and suggested they try again; but Hendrik had already stowed away the armour and made himself a solemn promise to restrict any instincts of a thespian nature—in the unlikely event they should ever reassert themselves—to the _formal_ stage only.

* * *

List now exhausted save the one remaining idea, Hendrik was just despairing on such trifling matters as the state of the world, his inadequacy as a husband, and the imperiled happiness of his domestic union, when his wife came to his rescue.

“Here,” she told him one evening after they had retired to their chambers for the night. He looked up from his book to see her holding out a pile of brightly-coloured fabric.

“What is this?” he asked in confusion, accepting it automatically.

Jade gave him an impish smile just this side of outright _naughty_. “Scarves. I want you to tie me up with them, Hendrik.”

His mind stumbled over that answer. “Tie...tie you...”

She leaned over him from behind, sliding her hands down his chest. “Yes,” she breathed into his ear. “I know you’ve been trying very hard lately, Hendrik, so I’ll make it easy for you. Tie me to the bed and have your wicked way with me. _Please_.”

“Oh,” he gasped, then again when he turned his head toward her and she captured his lips with her own. He felt himself begin to harden within his trousers as their tongues slid together and she let out an irresistibly enticing whimper.

Soon they were moving impatiently over to the bed, his fingers busy at the ties of her gown while she tugged his shirt over his head. He groaned at the sight of her breasts when she pulled the bodice down and could not resist reaching out to caress them.

“Not yet,” she breathed. “I want to be—helpless before you—”

While he watched with a rapt gaze, his enchanting wife shoved the remainder of her clothing down her legs and kicked off the skirts of her dress. She stepped to the bed and sat upon it, shifting until she was settled in the middle of the mattress on her back.

“Now,” she said in a sultry voice that sent his heart knocking in his chest, “bind me, Sir Hendrik.”

She stretched out her arms and legs, looking the very vision of heaven as Hendrik had always imagined it. He reflexively swallowed and then climbed up after her, swaying to keep his balance as the mattress dipped with his weight.

He took one delicate wrist in his grasp and carefully knotted a scarf around it before fastening the other end to one of the bed’s four posts.

“Is that acceptable, Princess Jade?” he asked in a murmur. She tugged at it several times and then nodded, her eyes hooded as she watched him move to the other wrist.

Her chest had begun to heave with her laboured breathing when he finished tying her arms and sat back to admire his work. The crimson cloth looked exquisite contrasted against her pale skin and dark hair. ‘Powerless’ was not a word that would normally occur to him when considering his formidable wife, but she was strangely sensual in her vulnerability here—a sensuality that had his predatory instincts rising to the forefront in a way they had not since their encounter in the training room. His cock strained against the laces of his trousers, already harder than he had even thought possible untouched.

Hendrik could see the evidence of her arousal between her legs when he moved down to her lower half. He let his fingers brush lingeringly down her thigh and thrilled at the way she squirmed her hips. He trailed down her knee to her calf and then beyond to her ankle. As soon as he touched it, she jerked her foot back.

“Jade?” he asked, instantly concerned.

“Sorry,” she said a bit breathlessly. “I’m just a little—ticklish there, that’s all. Please continue.”

He tried to hold her ankle in as firm a grip as he could while he tied the scarf around it and fastened it to the third post. He could feel her strain as she tried to bite back her reactions, but then she relaxed when he finally let go and shifted to the other side of the bed.

No sooner had he touched her other ankle than she spasmed and let out a huff. “That one’s—almost worse somehow—”

“I shall endeavour to be hasty,” he assured her. And he _did_ endeavour, but still he knew her to be summoning every ounce of willpower within herself to keep from pulling her foot from his grasp.

He had nearly— _nearly_ —finished with the knot when it happened. A sudden shift on the bed had his fingers and the scarf both whispering over her skin at once, and the princess could no longer fight her instincts. Her leg jerked upwards with the full force of her considerable strength and collided with the side of his face. Hendrik let out a startled cry as he was thrown backwards and slammed into the wooden bedpost behind him. A sharp _crack_ was heard in the air at the same time as an excruciating pain jolted through his head, and then all went to blackness.

“...endrik...Hendrik!”

The first two things he became aware of were gentle hands cupping his cheeks and a concerned voice in his ears. Hendrik blinked his eyes open blearily and the firelit room slowly swam into focus. A pale face loomed over him, violet eyes filled with worry.

“Hendrik!” Jade gasped with relief. “Are you all right?”

“I...I believe so...” He attempted to push himself up off the floor—the floor? When had he fallen to the floor?—and winced at the agonizing ache that pounded through his head. His wife’s hands fell to his shoulders as she helped him sit upright.

“Can you heal yourself?” she asked. He nodded and raised one weary hand before a bright flash lit up the room and the blessed relief of his spell coursed its way through his body. Shaking his head to test its effect, he then turned to his princess.

She had thrown on a silk dressing gown at some point, a pastel hue that clashed sharply with the tattered crimson fabric at her wrists. He frowned at that, trying to recall something important, something that he should—

“Jade! However did you come to free yourself?” he asked urgently.

His wife hesitated and then glanced over at the bed. Hendrik followed her gaze and his eyes widened at the sight of the four posts surrounding it—or rather, the _remains_ of four posts, now broken and splintered into jagged pieces.

“We’re lucky I spent sixteen years training in martial arts and fisticuffs, I suppose,” she remarked.

“Quite,” her knight agreed faintly.

Then she turned to him again, her face grave. “Hendrik, this has gone far enough. I know you’ve been trying for my sake—and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that—but I think it’s clear now that we’re working against your better nature here. We need to stop before one of us gets seriously hurt.”

He opened his mouth to object but she pressed a finger against his lips to silence him. Her head tilted and she gave him a tender smile.

“I love our life together,” she told him quietly, “and I love _you_. There’s nothing wanting in what we have, and you must never feel that way. It was just a suggestion—nothing more.”

Hendrik swallowed, his throat catching. “I...I wish only for your happiness in everything I do...”

“And you’ve got it.” Jade leaned over to press a lingering kiss to his lips. He returned it, entirely overwhelmed by the compassion and understanding that he could never in this life deserve.

“Now,” she said brusquely after she pulled away, “we should probably find out if the castle carpenter responds to calls after-hours.”

* * *

True to her word, the princess never again made reference to the subject that had thrown Hendrik’s life into such upheaval for those two weeks. She was as affectionate as always, as enthusiastic in their bedroom activities, and as seemingly contented with every aspect of her life—both personal and professional—as she ever had been. Watching her chatting animatedly with her father one morning at breakfast, Hendrik marvelled all over again at the miracle that was this astonishing woman who had chosen _him_ as her sworn husband.

Yet still he found himself restless as he paced in his study later that day. He felt acutely aware of the parchment within his desk drawer with its numerous stricken ideas; it gnawed at the back of his mind, mocking him for his shameful inadequacies.

He stepped over to the bookshelf and brushed his fingers over the embossed spines until they stopped on a large, red tome. ‘The Chivalric Ideal’ it displayed in gold lettering. He took it from the shelf and had a closer look.

_Chivalry. All who dare to call themselves knights cherish this above all else. It is the criterion by which our worth is weighed._

_Do not shirk in your duties or your training. Strive to exceed your limitations, be they physical or mental. At all times, and whoever you may encounter, be well-mannered and gentle._

_But more sacred than any of these instructions is this: should you set yourself a goal, should you make a promise, do not fail to achieve it. Do not allow yourself to be swayed from your path._

_Never—never—go back on your word. He who does so cannot claim to be any kind of knight. Take this firmly to heart, lest all your years of training be in vain._

Hendrik’s chest tightened painfully as he read the words again and again. Finally, he closed the book and set it back upon the shelf. He took a deep breath, straightened in place, and then strode over to his desk to begin making his arrangements.

* * *

His wife was—to put it mildly— _singularly_ displeased.

“Why in the world are you making the trip _now?_ ” she demanded as they walked through the castle hallways to the stables. “Isn’t Don Rodrigo coming here with the new trainees just next month?”

“He is,” Hendrik acknowledged, hefting his pack more securely over his shoulder. “But I have urgent business to discuss in Puerto Valor pertaining to, ah—knightly matters.”

It was not a falsehood in anything but implication, but still an uneasy disquiet coiled through Hendrik at his words. He could only put his faith in the idea that everything he did, he did for _her_ sake, and endure the guilt as best he was able.

Jade frowned up at him. “And it has to be done straight away? You know the Gondolian delegation’s arriving tomorrow.” Her eyes narrowed. “This had better not be because you want to skip the banquet we’re hosting in their honour.”

“Certainly not,” her husband assured her. “I have indeed grown...accustomed to such occasions in recent months.”

This brought a small smile to her face and his heart skipped a beat.

“I suppose that’s true,” she conceded. “And I wouldn’t think you’d choose a trip through the Manglegrove instead of wearing a formal suit for three hours.”

“As you say, Your Highness.”

They arrived at the stable doors and halted. Jade studied his face with a searching gaze that filled Hendrik with sudden worry that she had seen through to the heart of his ruse; but then she sighed and reached up to slip her hands around his neck.

“Well, I’ll certainly miss you,” she told him in a quiet voice. Her expression turned teasing. “And _you’ll_ miss the new gown I had made for the occasion. It’s quite stunning, really—I wouldn’t be surprised if you have a few new rivals upon your return.”

“Then I shall come back fully prepared to duel for your favour once more, Princess.” Hendrik glanced around the hall to ensure their privacy before he leaned down to meet her lips with his own. She kissed him back with an enthusiasm that had him reconsidering both his time of departure _and_ the journey in entirety before she pulled away again.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“And I you,” he returned. “Be well, Jade.”

He kept her words of endearment in mind as he mounted Obsidian and set out from the stables to the path beyond the city. The roads were clear and the weather pleasant, promising good travels ahead of him; at this pace, he would almost certainly reach the seaside town by midday next. His mind wandered as he rode and he made earnest attempt to reassert the rightness of his decision within his troubled soul.

Turning to the king, of course, had been out of the question; though Hendrik valued his wisdom and often sought his counsel, this was an unthinkable matter to bring before him. Lord Robert had been equally disqualified—and, indeed, few of his comrades possessed the qualifications necessary for the assistance that he so desperately sought. Even the Luminary, in whom Hendrik had found himself confiding countless times during their quest, lacked the necessary experience.

No, there was truly only one option that remained; and though it rent his soul to partake of it, Hendrik knew he had no choice for the sake of both his marriage _and_ his own ideals as a knight. He could only hope that the cost would be well worth what he gained in return.

* * *

Standing in front of the finely engraved door as he awaited a response to his knock, Hendrik began to have some very profound, very despairing second thoughts. It was surely not too late to cite some emergency to Servantes and decamp from the villa before anyone was the wiser. In fact, that seemed altogether the best course of—

Before he could move a muscle, the door opened. The man before him blinked several times and then his face split into a broad grin. “Why, Hendrik darling! What are _you_ doing here?”

“Well met, Sylvando,” Hendrik replied with a strained composure. “I find myself here on business of—ah, may I come in?”

“Of course, of course!” The other man waved him inside and shut the door behind them.

It was Hendrik’s turn to blink as he took in the appearance of the large room’s interior. A far cry from the austerity of their boyhood days, Sylvando’s quarters contained a riot of patterned upholstery and colourful fabrics, as well as furnishings gathered from apparently every corner of the world. The eclectic mix of decorating styles might have been considered garish under a less skilled hand, but even to Hendrik’s eye they coalesced into a pleasing whole.

“Sit down, honey,” Sylvando said, pointing to an overly-cushioned couch. Hendrik walked stiffly over and perched on the edge of it, uncertain if he were allowed to press his weight against the fearfully embroidered pillows at his back.

After a query about refreshments and a polite refusal, the other man sought his own seat and crossed his long legs before him. “So, tell me! How is everyone doing in Heliodor? How’s Jade? Gosh, I don’t think I’ve seen you guys since just after the honeymoon!”

“She is well,” Hendrik replied with a nod. “We are all of us quite well—and the Luminary too, on the occasions he visits from Cobblestone.”

“Good, I’m happy to hear it.” Sylvando’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. “And you, Hendrik dear? How are _you_ doing?”

Hendrik swallowed and scratched at an itch underneath his collar. “I am...that is to say...” His shoulders suddenly slumped and he let his head hang. “Truthfully, I...find myself in desperate need of your aid, Sylvando.”

“Hmm, I thought you might.” A glance upwards showed the other knight to be looking at him with a wealth of sympathy in his gaze. “So what’s the matter, darling?”

Now faced with the moment of disclosure, all of Hendrik’s carefully prepared words—practiced so diligently during the long ride—flew out the colourfully-draped window. “I...I seek advice on the subject of...in specific, my domestic...I had thought to ask you if there was any way that you might...”

Sylvando’s eyebrows rose higher and higher on his face as his friend struggled manfully with his uncooperative tongue. Finally, he took a deep breath and mentally cuffed himself. Was he a knight of Heliodor or was he yet some bumbling trainee?

“The princess has expressed some dissatisfaction with my leadership abilities in matters of our marital relations,” Hendrik said in a rush, approximately half again as loudly as he had intended.

There was a pause for several seconds. Then a truly _insupportable_ smile spread across Sylvando’s face and he opened his mouth to speak. Before he could say a word, Hendrik abruptly stood.

“This was a grievous error,” he declared. “Strike from your memory any record of the conversation.”

Already keenly aware of the flush creeping up his neck, he strode over to the door with the full intention of fleeing through it when his arm was caught by an insistent hand.

“Oh come now, Henny-Wenny, don’t be like that!” Sylvando urged his reluctant friend back over to the couch and firmly sat him upon it. “I’m _honoured_ that you came to me about this—truly I am!”

“I...I am myself not yet certain of the wisdom of this course,” Hendrik mumbled, fiddling distractedly with his gloves. He willed his blush to recede, not any more successful _this_ time than the other thousand attempts he had ever made in his life.

“Don’t you worry, honey—you made the right decision.” Sylvando reclaimed his own seat and then leaned forward with his chin propped up in his hands. “So, tell me all the details.”

Hendrik practically shrank back from him. “Surely—surely not _all?_ ” Images flashed unbidden through his head and he felt his flush deepen further.

Sylvando clucked his tongue. “If you want me to help, then I need to know what you’ve already tried, yeah?” His smile turned sly. “But you can skip anything that Jade would Vacuum Smash you for if she knew.”

Haltingly, Hendrik began to lay out his dilemma and—in the broadest possible terms—an accounting of the ideas he had put into practice. After the third such time as Sylvando’s delighted amusement nearly derailed his resolve, he steadfastly refused to look at the man as he spoke. Grimly, Hendrik wondered if the author of ‘The Chivalric Ideal’ had ever expected _this_ as a natural consequence of the words he had so recklessly put to paper.

When he was finally— _blessedly_ —finished, he sneaked a glance at his friend to find him looking thoughtful.

“I think your problem, honey,” Sylvando said slowly, “is that you’re too stuck in your own head. You just need something to help you along, that’s all! Have you tried a little liquid courage?”

The man performed a remarkably evocative mimicry of his downing what Hendrik presumed to be an entire bottle of alcohol—perhaps not surprising given his long history as a performer.

“I did not deem it wise,” he replied with a shake of his head. "I find that the consumption of spirits gives me a tendency towards...somnolence.”

Sylvando flashed him a quick grin. “Oh yes, _now_ I remember what happened when we raided Papi’s stash that one time. But if not that, then..."

He was lost in thought for some moments. Then all at once he leapt up and went over to his dressing table where he opened a large chest. Hendrik craned his neck to see it filled with a bewildering array of bottles and jars of all sorts of shapes and sizes. Sylvando selected one of them—a small vial filled with an orange liquid—and returned. He presented it to Hendrik with a flourish.

“What manner of potion is this?” the knight asked suspiciously.

“Just a little pick-me-up that I got from a vendor in Gallopolis,” his friend assured him. “Two drops of _this_ and you’ll transform into the manly, dominant hero of her dreams, ready to demand _exactly_ what you want and how you want it from her.”

It sounded far too simple to be trusted. But Hendrik accepted the vial all the same, staring at it with a whisper of hope rising within his chest. “That is...that is truly all it takes?”

“Of course, darling!” Sylvando’s voice then turned cautioning. “But _only_ two drops, remember—any more and I don’t even _know_ what might happen. As our dear Serena always says, it never hurts to be careful with a potion, eh?”

Hendrik nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, it certainly does not.”

Then he shook his head and looked to Sylvando. “I cannot thank you enough,” he said gravely. “I am truly in your debt.”

“Oh, _please_ ,” the other knight scoffed with a flip of his hand. “Anything to help my two favourite lovebirds! Now you’ll stay for lunch before heading back, won’t you? I’ll never hear the end of it from Papi if I let you leave unfed!”

* * *

After a pleasant luncheon and an impromptu tour of the training facilities, Hendrik took his leave. He was eager to return home to his princess, keenly conscious of the vial tucked safely into the pouch at his belt with all its promise of resolution.

He made good time through the Costa Valor but encountered a savage rainstorm in the Manglegrove that forced him to seek shelter in a woodcutter’s dwelling. The delay was near agonizing to the impatient knight, and he paced restlessly within the cabin as the rain lashed the shutters and the friendly old man nattered ceaselessly at him. Though apart for a mere two days, it somehow felt a year or more since he had last basked in the warmth of his beloved wife’s presence.

By next morning the rains had passed and he was able to continue on his journey. Early that evening, he crested a rise and finally saw Heliodor in all its splendour in the distance. Although longing to reunite with his wife, he reined Obsidian in and paused for a time as he considered his course.

It should prove a quiet enough night overall; the banquet had been scheduled for the evening previous and the delegation would have left that following morning. Jade, tired from the courtesies and diplomacy, had doubtless pled fatigue to her father and retired early. She was perhaps that very minute in her chambers already, settling down with a book or letter. Hendrik could see her clearly in his mind: a vision of loveliness that made his breath catch in his throat.

He took out the vial from his pouch and stared at it for a long moment. _Two drops_ , Sylvando had said. As Hendrik reached over to retrieve a utensil from his saddlebag, he hesitated.

Two drops would doubtless suffice for one of his brother knight’s size, but Hendrik was considerably larger in both frame and weight; he recalled Serena’s lecturing the Luminary once that such considerations were a highly important aspect of proper dosage. As well, with his eagerness to return to his beautiful wife, surely it could only _heighten_ their reunion if he should be able to surprise her with such a display of commanding confidence as would surpass her wildest dreams?

Before he could think the better of it, Hendrik worked the stopper out of the vial and downed the entirety of its contents in one gulp. His lips pursed as he tasted the sickening sweetness; then he returned the vial to his pouch, shook Obsidian’s reins, and galloped down the hill towards home.


	3. The Unswayed Path

Jade smothered a sigh and toyed with one of the bangles on her gloved wrist. It surely hadn’t been more than a few minutes since the Gondolian emissary’s wife had started talking to her, so why did it feel like she’d blacked out and missed the passing of several seasons in the meantime?

All around her was the bustle of conversation, the swishing of formal finery, and the clinking of utensils on porcelain dishes. Her father had called an intermission to the banquet to give the servants time to clear the tables before dessert, which Jade knew he meant for the purposes of the dreaded ‘mingling’. The only thing _she_ wished to mingle at the moment, however, was her head with the nearest cast iron pot if this woman wouldn’t stop droning on about her precious pet parakeets.

Finally—when the conversation then turned to an extollation of the virtues of imported Costa Valor seeds versus those from the Laguna di Gondolia—Jade had had enough.

“This has all been absolutely _fascinating_ ,” she said in a voice dripping with sincerity, “but I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me—there’s an urgent matter I must discuss with my father.”

“Oh, naturalmente, Your Highness!” the woman assured her. “Come see me again when you are finito and I can tell you more about feather care!”

Jade gave a vague response that was as near to a commitment without _actually_ committing as possible, then made her escape. After dodging a young waiter carrying a truly alarming stack of plates, she spotted her father speaking with the emissary himself in a far corner of the room.

Before walking over to them, she grabbed a nearby goblet of wine and drained the entire thing in one go. She didn’t normally drink at these types of events, but something about this one had her far more on edge than usual. Perhaps it was the precipitous height of these new heels she wore with her gown; perhaps it was the speech she was set to give after dessert, her nervous rehearsals bouncing around in her head; perhaps it was the unexpected change in the banquet’s schedule due to the emissary’s coming down with a bout of food poisoning the night previous.

Or perhaps it was the absence of a man she missed _much_ more dearly than she’d even expected. This was the longest she and Hendrik had been apart from each other since the wedding and it was almost strange how empty the castle felt without him. Knowing that she could count on her husband’s _thoroughness_ above all else, his business in Puerto Valor probably wouldn’t have him home before tomorrow at the earliest.

She frowned as she considered that. He’d been a bit cagey as to the purpose of the trip, but she didn’t think it was solely due to avoiding the banquet (which didn’t even have any dancing involved, his _usual_ reason for dreading formal affairs). It was possible he was planning a surprise for her birthday next month; it was a nice thought, and she amused herself with it as she set the goblet down and strode over to join her father.

“Ah, there you are, my dear,” he said to her as he held out a hand. “The emissary and I were just discussing books.”

“Are you a great reader, Principessa?” the jolly little man inquired.

“Not especially,” she admitted with a smile. “Sir Hendrik’s the more bookish of the two of us.”

The man nodded. “Ah, I was deluso—disappointed—to not be able to meet your husband. A very impressive cavaliere he is, infatti.”

“Indeed,” her father agreed. “And far more studious in adulthood than he ever was as a boy, I dare say. In fact—did he not recently acquire a first edition chronicle of Drustan’s life, Jade?”

“Yes, actually.” Seeing her chance and leaping onto it, Jade hurried to add: “I could go and fetch it from his study if Your Excellency would like to have a look.”

“Ah, sì! That would be splendido, Your Highness!”

“If you’ll excuse me, then—” She graced him with another smile and then made a valiant attempt to leave the room with a composure more akin to ‘stately elegance’ than ‘desperate retreat’.

Once out in the quiet hallway, Jade finally let out the sigh that she’d been suppressing for the past two hours. Normally she tolerated these functions well, but it just wasn’t the same not having Hendrik around to tease and flirt with and vent to in hushed corners. He’d been such a staple of her life since her return, and it felt wrong to be discoursing with foreign dignitaries without him—and his charmingly pained conversational ability—at her side.

She was especially disappointed in his not being able to see her in her dress. The seamstress had outdone herself with the satin creation, the white bodice flowing into a ruffled purple skirt and accented with gold at the waist. She wore a large choker at her neck and her mother’s tiara was nestled in her hair high atop her head. The colours had been specifically chosen to complement Hendrik’s customary formal outfit, and she mourned the inconvenience of the timing.

(As well as the inconvenience of not having him around to goggle with such helpless desire as she _knew_ would ignite upon seeing her. She’d had _plans_ for their evening after wearing this dress, and his trip had all rather spoiled them.)

Hendrik’s study was dark but for a low fire as Jade slipped inside and immediately strode over to the bookshelf. Her fingers brushed across the spines until she found the one she sought. She’d just taken it from the shelf when a voice came to her from across the room and she nearly dropped the book in surprise.

“Did you seek something in particular, Your Highness?”

She whirled to see Hendrik sitting at his desk with his gloved hands folded before him. He was dressed in his formalwear with his black jacket hanging off the back of his chair.

“Hendrik!” she gasped. “I—I wasn’t expecting you there. When did you get back?”

He inclined his head to her. “Only in the last half-hour. The steward informed me of the change in schedule and I adjusted my apparel accordingly.”

While she watched, he took a piece of parchment from the top of his desk and put it in the drawer, closing it firmly shut before his eyes returned to her. There was something...unusual in his gaze as it roved over her body, seemingly taking in her appearance from head to toe. Though her heart nearly burst from happiness to see him again, something about that look kept her rooted in place as a tingle of hesitation whispered through her. Which didn’t make any sense at all, of course—it was only _Hendrik_.

She cleared her throat and absently fidgeted with the large tome she held. “Did your...did your trip go well?”

“Excellently well. It was a most fruitful venture.” Still his eyes remained upon her with that same disconcerting intensity.

“Were you planning on joining the banquet, then?” she asked, feeling rather like her _own_ conversational skills had deserted her in the face of this peculiar scene. “There’s still dessert left, and I’m set to make a speech afterwards.”

“That was my intention, yes,” he acknowledged. Then he raised one hand and beckoned to her. “But first, come—I would have a proper greeting from my wife upon my return.”

Jade deliberately shook off the lingering strangeness and placed the book on a sideboard before she went across the room to him, her heels clicking on the polished floor.

“And when have you ever been known for _im_ proper behaviour, Sir Hendrik?” she said with a teasing smile as she joined him at the desk. She slid her hands around his neck, his seated position giving her a slight advantage of height for once. “In fact, I often think the _opposite_ has—”

Her words cut off in muffled surprise as he pulled her in for a heated kiss. One leather-gloved hand went around her waist and the other dug into her hair below her ponytail, tilting her head for better access. She could not help a low whimper as Hendrik practically _devoured_ her mouth, his tongue slipping inside to stroke against hers. There was an unusual sweetness to his taste that she couldn’t account for; though he often indulged her in her own fondness for sugary treats, he rarely partook himself. The thought then flew away from her entirely when he nibbled on her lower lip and she gasped in response.

Goodness, but it was divine to have his touch upon her again. She felt the heat of him through the gloves as his fingers tightened in their grasp and he pulled her closer. She’d missed him in every aspect of their wonderful life, but especially _this_ , the way he made her feel when their bodies pressed tightly together. Her hands clung to his shoulders and she lost herself in his dizzying embrace.

Finally—after a delirious amount of time that could have been anywhere from thirty seconds to a full hour—he let her go. His face was slightly flushed and his breath escaped him in short pants when he pulled back. What she noticed most keenly, however—what sent a startling rush of heat down through her belly—was the _hunger_ in his eyes as he gazed at her. She’d hoped for a positive response to her outfit, but this was somehow on an altogether unexpected level.

“Do you like my new dress?” she asked in a hushed voice.

The hand in her hair trailed down along her neck and over the choker to her collarbone below. Jade shivered as she felt the whispering leather of his glove along her skin, almost unable to help arching into his touch.

“I find it...most pleasing,” he replied, his slight hoarseness sending a thrill through her. “I might almost think that you had _deliberately_ planned to evoke such a reaction out of me, Jade.”

Her lips curved into a smile as she rallied some semblance of mischief. “But when have I ever been known to do _that_ , Sir Knight?”

She sucked in a sharp breath when the back of his hand brushed teasingly along the side of her breast and continued downwards.

“Considerably more often than I would sometimes wish,” he said with a frown. His fingers curled about her waist, their span reaching almost halfway around it. “Most especially when you refuse to take responsibility for the result.”

To emphasize his point, Hendrik grabbed one of her hands and brought it down to his lap. Jade gasped again when she felt the evidence of his desire straining to escape the fine white trousers he wore.

“ _Oh_ ,” she breathed. “I’m...starting to get the impression that you missed me, Hendrik.”

“And _I_ begin to feel that I have too long indulged your reckless provocations,“ he retorted, his length almost seeming to pulse beneath her fingers. “It is well time that I redressed this lapse.”

Hendrik’s eyes were dark and unyielding as they met hers. “Kneel, Princess.”

Even as Jade stared at him in shock, another rush of heat thrummed down to her core. Her knees felt suddenly incapable of holding up her own weight; _not_ altogether helpful in the present circumstances. “Hendrik, I—we can’t, there’s the banquet to get back to, and—and I have a speech to give afterwards—”

“Then you had best hasten.” His voice was a commanding gravel that, rather than repelling her, only served to heighten the growing ache between her legs.

The air had taken on a surreal quality to Jade as she swallowed hard and made her decision. Without breaking her gaze from his, she slowly knelt before him, gathering up her skirts to keep from ruining them on the tiled floor. His hand dropped from her waist and moved instead to her face, brushing her bangs back with a gentleness that belied his stern expression.

She wondered dazedly how in the _world_ she’d gotten into this situation as her fingers went to his trouser laces and made quick work of them. Hendrik hissed and rocked his hips forward when she reached in and pulled out his sizeable erection. Absurdly, her mouth began to water when she saw it, larger and harder than perhaps it had _ever_ been; she took in a shuddering breath to steady herself and unconsciously licked her lips.

Hendrik’s hand moved to the back of her head and tangled itself in her hair, firmly tugging her closer.

“Now, Princess,” he rasped. “Show me with what eagerness you delight in pleasing your husband.”

And so, without even stopping to think, she obeyed.

He moaned when she curled her white satin fingers around his length and squeezed, holding it upright so she could lean in and nuzzle at his flushed skin. She heard his strangled gasps as she flicked out her tongue and slowly slid it upwards from base to tip. She mouthed and licked at the point where the head met the shaft, intimately aware of its sensitivity; then, his hips straining beneath her, she sucked the head into her mouth and tongued at the tip, swallowing reflexively around his intoxicating taste.

“How exquisite you look on your knees before me, Jade,” he gasped, his eyes hooded as he watched her. “Dressed as finely as a queen, jewels at your ears and throat—surely your lips were _made_ to wrap around my cock.”

Jade found herself blushing hotly at his words even as she took him deeper inside. Hendrik had _never_ spoken to her in such terms before; she would scarcely believe that any of this was real, if but for the sound of his throaty groans above and the heated throbbing at the apex of her thighs. She longed to touch herself while she pleasured him, but her voluminous skirts stymied her attempts to reach between her own legs.

“ _Yes_ ,” he whispered, throwing his head back when she began to bob on and off his cock. “You have honed your skills to perfection, Princess—I cannot long—”

There was a knock at the door.

Jade jerked back, his length slipping out of her mouth with an audible _pop_. Before she could scramble up, Hendrik’s hand tightened at the back of her head and he pressed her to him once more. Her eyes flew up to his in astonishment and he gave her only a tight nod before she helplessly took him back inside her mouth. After a shuddering breath, he pulled the jacket off the back of his chair and covered her entirely with it, shifting so that she was pushed underneath the desk and out of sight.

“Enter,” he called out with bewildering composure.

The door clicked open and she heard the muted sounds of the banquet from beyond the hallway.

“Sir Hendrik,” came the respectful voice of the steward. “His Majesty is looking for Princess Jade. Do you happen to know where she is?”

Jade froze in alarm, her mouth spread almost comically wide around his length; after a moment, Hendrik’s fingers dug into her hair and he began to direct her motions, slowly rocking her head back and forth as he gently thrust into her.

“I cannot in good conscience account for Her Highness’s whereabouts,” Hendrik replied with only a hint of strain in his tone.

“Very well, sir. I shall keep searching.” The door clicked shut and the room fell to silence once more.

Hendrik looked down and met her gaze, a strange gleam within his eyes. He tugged the jacket off and let it fall to the floor, his hand not for a second ceasing in its steady movements on her head.

“An admirable performance, Jade,” he complimented her, his lips parting with panted breaths. “Your husband’s need for your lovely mouth on his cock is, of course, to be put above all other concerns. I am...well pleased with your dutiful behaviour...”

With a rough moan, he thrust his hips forward and she sucked in a sharp breath through her nose as she struggled to accommodate him. Far from being offended or repulsed, Jade squirmed and rubbed her thighs together, desperate for some relief for her feverish sex. Hendrik often told her how well he enjoyed her attentions, but never like _this_ , as if it were his _right_ to demand entrance to her body in whatever fashion he saw fit.

His breathing had begun to hitch in his chest in a way that she knew meant he was close. Determined to prove her own talents, she clutched at his large thigh with one hand and squeezed the base of his cock in the other, sucking him in deeper than ever before. He let out a strangled sound and pulled at her hair as he jerked against her.

“Jade,” he gasped out. “Prepare yourself for my release—Take it—inside you as any steadfast wife should—”

Really, she didn’t have much _choice_ in the matter as he let out a low cry and his hips bucked against her face. Seconds later, she felt his cock throb and the warmth of his seed flooded her mouth. He fell back into the chair panting as his softening length slipped out of her and she valiantly tried to swallow in its wake, the heavy taste of him nearly overwhelming her.

Gloved fingers caressed her cheek and her gaze snapped up to his. Hendrik was looking down at her with tenderness in his heavily lidded eyes. He lightly brushed his thumb over her lower lip.

“And not a drop spilled,” he said quietly, his voice filled with no less satisfaction than pride. “Fine work indeed, my love.”

Jade swallowed again, feeling almost lightheaded from the mixture of shock and arousal that coursed through her.

“Hendrik,” she said shakily, pressing her hands into his thighs as she rose on unsteady feet. Despite her efforts, her skirts seemed to have come out of the affair in a rather tragic state. “Hendrik, what has gotten into you tonight?”

He frowned at her, his fingers curling around the chair arms. “What do you mean? I am merely a man most appreciative of his wife’s finer qualities.” He paused. “Does my behaviour displease you in some way?”

“No, that’s not it,” she said breathlessly. “Actually, far from it, but—”

The air sucked into her in a gasp when his hands went to her skirts and began to pull them up. Before she could even register what was happening, he had pushed past her underclothes and slipped two fingers deep into her dripping sex.

“Ah, now I understand,” he murmured, ignoring her helpless moan as she clutched at his shoulders. “How eagerly you take me inside you, Princess.”

Hendrik slowly began to work his fingers in and out of her, watching her reaction with an almost languid gaze. Jade whimpered shamelessly and rocked her hips in time with the movement of his hand. She was so close—she _knew_ she was so close even with his barely having touched her—but still something intruded in her mind, something she knew she desperately had to attend to—

“Hendrik,” she gasped again. “Hendrik, I’m set to...I need to make a speech soon...they’re already looking for me... _Hendrik_...”

He considered that, almost absently reaching up to pinch one of her nipples through her dress as his other fingers continued to thrust into her.

“A fair point,” he finally conceded. “I see the wisdom of your objection.”

She nearly protested when he pulled his hand away and let her skirts fall to the floor, her core clenching around the sudden emptiness within her. He looked almost amused while he watched her draw in a choked breath and she struggled to steady herself.

“We’ll...pick this up where we left off later,” Jade told him in a trembling voice, as if _pretending_ she had any control over the situation could somehow make it so. In sharp contrast to her words, she could feel the wetness of her arousal on her thighs as they brushed against each other.

Hendrik inclined his head in a respectful nod. “I shall endeavour to make myself available to Your Highness. But before that—”

The next moment his fingers were at her lips, pushing past them to slide inside her mouth. She gasped around them as her own musk flooded her senses. He looked on approvingly as her tongue slipped against the smooth leather of his glove.

“There,” he said with satisfaction. “Does the taste of us mingled together please you, my wife?”

Jade nodded jerkily, her eyes wide.

“As it should.” His hand dropped again and he quickly laced up his trousers before pushing back his chair and rising. She watched in disbelief while he pulled on his jacket and carefully buttoned up the clasps, looking for all the world as if he _hadn’t_ just ordered his princess to her knees before him and spent himself inside her mouth.

He straightened his gloves on his hands and then turned to her inquiringly. “Shall we?” he asked, propping his elbow out with exquisite courtesy.

She stepped forward in a daze and slipped her hand through it, ineffectively trying to fluff out her rumpled skirts with her other one. Nodding once more, Hendrik led her over to the door and then out to the party beyond.

* * *

All told, Jade had had _less_ uncomfortable evenings in her life.

Upon returning to the banquet, she immediately went to her father, who chided her for her lateness and then signalled to the waiters to prepare the dessert. From there, she searched again for her husband—not a difficult task in a sea of short-statured Gondolians. Surprisingly, she found him not skulking in the sidelines but instead engaged in conversation with the emissary.

“Ah! Principessa!” The little man beamed as she joined them. She was about to reply when she suddenly felt Hendrik’s hand slip to her waist, pressing itself firmly into the small of her back, and rather lost her words in her fluster.

“I was just speaking to your marito—husband—here,” the emissary enthused. “I am truly felicissimo to have been able to meet him after all!”

“His Excellency mentioned a book on Drustan you had gone to retrieve,” Hendrik informed her. He frowned slightly. “Did you neglect to bring it with you?”

Jade swallowed, willing her racing heart to calm as she felt the whisper of his fingers stroking her back. “I—I’m sorry, Your Excellency, it...completely slipped my mind.”

Hendrik shook his head apologetically and turned back to the emissary. “The fault is mine, I fear—I had meant to surprise Her Highness with my return this evening, and must have distracted her from her task.”

“Per favore, say no more,” the little man chuckled. “I remember my own reunions with my moglie during our newlywed months. Very spirited, sì!”

As Hendrik nodded along politely, Jade inwardly doubted very much that the emissary and his parakeet-loving wife had _ever_ had a reunion with as much ‘spirit’ as she’d just gone through. Thankfully, she was spared from further conversation by the announcement of dessert being served.

The room bustled with activity all around them as she and Hendrik made their way over to their customary place at the king’s left. The knight pulled her chair out for her and she flashed a smile at him as she sat at the table. Though never _usually_ reluctant to receive the attentions of her doting husband, she was looking forward to some measure of relief in these minutes before her speech; still unused to public speaking, her nerves had begun to jitter her stomach and she wished to squeeze in one last mental rehearsal.

Jade had just dipped a spoon into her delicate cup of chocolate mousse when she felt a very large, very warm hand settle on her knee. She froze, her fingers tightening around the utensil.

“Is something the matter, dearest?” her father inquired beside her. “I had thought you particularly fond of this dessert.”

“Yes, I—yes, it’s...one of my favourites,” she replied, voice hitching slightly. The princess pulled the spoon up to her mouth in an admirable facsimile of calmness and composure.

The hand slowly began to slide up her leg, fingers pressing into her inner thigh through her skirts. Jade choked on her mousse and her teeth clacked against the metal spoon. She waved off her father’s concern and leaned instead towards the man on her other side.

“What are you doing?” she hissed at him.

“I would not wish you to think I had forgotten my promise,” Hendrik murmured, his breath ghosting against her ear and sending a shiver down her spine.

Jade swallowed again and shook her head. “I understand that, but—”

She broke off with a gasp as his hand shifted to the very top of her thigh and squeezed. Her hips rocked instinctively, desperate to feel his touch against her aching core.

Hendrik looked down at her with dark intensity; his gaze assured her that although he did _hear_ her objections, he was not of a mind to at all _heed_ them. Jade’s heart pounded in her ears and her breath escaped her lips in a rush. Who _was_ this man and what had he done with her gentle, solicitous husband?

His fingers brushed ever so slightly against her sex through the cloth and she had to clench her teeth to contain a whimper.

Which was, of course, _precisely_ the time that her father stood up and addressed the table.

“And now, honoured guests,” he declared in a ringing voice, “my daughter would like to say a few words.”

He turned to her expectantly. Jade took in a long, shuddering breath before she deliberately stood. The hand dropped from her leg and left a distressing coolness as she walked over to the head of the table on unsteady feet. She straightened her gloves and faced the dozens of attentive faces before she opened her mouth and...

...nothing came out.

A burst of sheer panic overtook her. In the confusion of the past hour, the speech that she had practiced so diligently the past two days had utterly flown from her head. But Jade hadn’t trained for sixteen years and fought on countless battlefields to be stymied by such a trifling matter as public speaking; she briefly closed her eyes and focused on one of the tricks she had learned from Rab: to imagine her audience naked.

Her eyes opened again and landed on Hendrik. No—not at _all_ helpful. Her gaze frantically flew to the emissary’s wife instead and she painted a mental picture of the stout woman basking nude with a flock of parakeets around her. That time, thank goodness, it worked.

“Thank you all for joining me this evening,” she began in a clear voice, “most especially our distinguished guests from Gondolia. Though the relationship between our two countries is young, I have hopes that we will enjoy many more such visits into the future as trade flourishes between us.”

Jade’s confidence rose as the words came back to her, and she spoke of the discussions they had engaged in during the past two days and the treaty that had been signed. She faltered only once, when her eyes went to Hendrik’s and found him gazing at her with an almost _hungry_ look on his face, clearly not listening to a word she was saying; after a brief pause, she deliberately turned from him and continued on to her conclusion. It was not a long speech, but she was proud of her efforts and poise in giving it.

When she was finished, a flurry of applause broke out. Her father patted her arm approvingly and then added a few words of his own, constitutionally incapable of letting an event go by without addressing an audience in some manner. Jade barely heard them as she went back to her chair and dropped bonelessly into it.

There was a puff of air against her ear and a possessive hand went once more to her leg. “An excellent speech, Princess Jade. I, for one, found you utterly _captivating_.”

Not trusting herself to speak, she could only nod. Her fingers trembled as she picked up her spoon and valiantly attempted to finish her dessert.

After the tables had been cleared, the banquet showed no signs of winding down. Her father—seeming to want to make up for lost time with his hosting abilities—had requisitioned musicians and performers for the entertainment of his guests. Jade, however, had other plans; she made the appropriate excuses to both the king and the emissary before going off to search for her husband. He had set himself by one of the wine stations, a goblet in his hands as he watched a troupe of jugglers.

“Let’s go,” she muttered to him with an insistent tug on his arm. Hendrik looked down at her appraisingly for a moment, and then placed the goblet on the table and allowed himself to be led away.

“You seem particularly eager to retire, Your Highness,” he remarked as she pulled him by the hand up the Banquet Hall staircase.

“I think you know very well why that is, Sir Hendrik,” she replied impatiently. “And if your mouth isn’t between my legs approximately two minutes from now, I’m going to be _exceedingly_ unhappy.”

When they reached the hallway above, one small part of her mind noted that the usual guards appeared vanished. But the larger part—the part that had been aching and throbbing for what felt an eternity—could only think of how desperately she wished them tangled up in the sheets of their bed, clothing haphazardly discarded on the floor below.

Her hand had just reached for the door when Hendrik cleared his throat. “A moment, Princess.”

She turned to him with a frown. “What is it?”

“I had a somewhat _different_ venue in mind for the resumption of our reunion. If you would—” His arm went out to gesture further down the dim hallway before he strode off. Jade followed him, confused and not a little annoyed at the delay.

The confusion transformed into outright bafflement when they reached the foyer before the throne room—equally bereft of guards—and Hendrik headed straight for the ornate doors at the end. He pushed them open with a low groan of the metal hinges and continued inside. When Jade entered after him, he pressed them firmly shut behind her.

It was dark and quiet within the large hall, only the shine of moonlight and flickering candles breaking up the room’s heavy shadows. Jade could dimly see the throne of Heliodor looming upon the dais at the far end, flanked by its two fiery braziers.

Hendrik’s face was unreadable when she looked up at him. “What’s this all about?” she asked, feeling even _further_ away from understanding his purpose.

He made another gesture. “Come, Princess.” Again she followed as he walked along the thick red carpet leading up to the throne and they mounted the steps together.

“Hendrik, really, I insist upon—” Jade let out a short _oof_ when her husband grabbed her by the waist and steered her toward the throne itself, pushing her down to the rich upholstery. Unable to resist in her shock, she could only watch as he carefully placed her hands upon the carved chair arms and then stepped back to cast his gaze over her.

“You look as a queen upon her throne,” he murmured in a voice near to awe. “A crown upon your head, garbed in royal purple, surrounded by grandeur..."

Hendrik knelt before her in something akin to a knight’s supplication. But there was _very_ little knightly about how he then reached out to claim one heeled foot in his hand and pressed a searing kiss to her ankle. “...ready to be _worshipped_.”

Jade gasped at the feel of his heated lips on her skin as he slowly began to trail them up her calf. Her fingers clutched at the chair arms and she arched her back when he pushed her skirts aside and nuzzled at her knee. “Hendrik, I—what are you—whatever in the _world_ has possessed you?”

“I merely obey my princess’s command,” he replied, his eyes flashing with firelight as they met hers. “Though I fear I have taken rather longer than the required two minutes—I shall endeavour to atone for this failure.”

She struggled to catch her breath when she felt his mouth begin its ascent up her thigh toward her burning arousal. As much as she wanted—fiercely, _desperately_ wanted—him to continue, still she had to object.

“But Hendrik,” she protested, a whine escaping her as his gloved hand reached up to push her legs apart, “we’re—we’re in the _throne_ _room_ , somebody could _see—_ ”

“And if they did?” he asked in a low voice, rough with desire. “They would see only a man attending to his wife with such thorough devotion as she deserves. I will accept no shame in that.”

It was suddenly impossible to make any further argument when he practically tore off her undergarments, exposing her flushed folds to the cool air of the room. He bunched up her skirts around her waist and looked down at her with an almost _predatory_ admiration before leaning forward and burying his face between her thighs.

Jade’s helpless moans echoed off the high ceiling of the throne room as her husband’s mouth moved over her feverish sex. His lips pressed together in sloppy kisses and his tongue flicked out to tease and tantalize before he began to stroke her with it, slow and agonizingly thorough. She instinctively hooked her feet around his shoulders and one hand clawed into his hair. He grunted when she pulled it tightly in her fist before returning to his work.

It was wrong. She _knew_ it was wrong, sitting sprawled out on the throne of her ancestors, her legs spread scandalously as her sworn knight licked and mouthed at her dripping arousal. She was almost of a mind to ask him to stop, a shiver of guilt twisting in her chest; but when he slipped two fingers inside her and sucked at the sensitive nub at the top of her folds, all thought vanished and a throaty cry burst out of her.

Hendrik paused and pulled back, frowning as he looked up at her from between her thighs. His fingers did not cease in their movements and she could hear the slickness of them as they plunged in and out of her sex.

“Be attentive to our surroundings, Your Highness,” he said sternly, for all the world sounding like a commander scolding a green lieutenant on the field. “If you do not wish us to be disturbed, then I would have you quiet your reactions.”

Before she could respond, he ducked his head again and resumed his attentions.

His free hand grasped her leg and held her down as she rocked her hips against him, her sex clenched around his thrusting fingers. She gasped his name again and again, struggling to control herself before someone outside the room heard and came to investigate. The jewellery at her wrists and ears jingled with her restless movements and her heels dug into the jacket on his back.

“Hendrik,” she whispered between heaving breaths, “Hendrik, I’m...I’m so close...Hendrik, _please—_ ”

She didn’t know what she even meant to beg him for, but he heard her all the same. His tongue moved more firmly against her in a steady stroking motion that he _knew_ drove her absolutely wild. And wild she became, bucking her hips and pulling at his hair and squeezing her legs so tightly against him that he surely could not breathe; then the crescendo of ecstasy crashed upon her and there was a pulsing deep within her core as her throat went hoarse from her hushed cries.

Hendrik helped her come back to herself in the dazed aftermath of her climax, nuzzling at thighs and stroking her skin in soothing gestures. When she wearily lifted her head and he finally pulled away, she could see her wetness glistening on his face and beard in the reflected light of the braziers. His eyes were dark and filled with a hunger that made her racing heart skip a beat.

“That was... _incredible_ ,” she told him breathlessly.

“As only befits my future queen.” He moved forward between her legs once more and pressed his mouth to hers in a deep kiss. She returned it passionately, tasting herself for the second time that night as their tongues stroked together.

He broke it off and took in a shuddering breath, his hands gripping the arms of the throne as his gaze slowly roved over her. She felt a thrilling rush of heat course through her stomach despite her release only minutes before, and her eyes snapped down to his trousers when he moved one hand to tug roughly at the laces.

Hendrik groaned when she reached out to help him and her gloved fingers wrapped around his cock, pulling it free. “So perfectly debauched upon your throne, Princess,” he said in a strained voice, one hand threading through her hair. “I am near tempted to slip between your lips once more. However..."

The hardening of his face was her only warning before he grabbed her firmly about the waist and spun her around on the throne. She gasped in surprise and clutched at the purple upholstery in front of her, looking back over her shoulder in confusion. “Hendrik, what—”

“You took my fingers into your wet heat eagerly enough,” he cut in. He pushed her skirts up over her waist and his gloved hands captured her hips in an iron grip. “Now, I wish to see how greedily you sheathe your husband’s _cock_.”

Jade felt the brush of something hot and hard against her folds before he let out a grunt and thrust his hips forward. Her back arched and her fingers dug into the throne as Hendrik filled her in one smooth motion. He waited only a moment for her to adjust before he pulled out and then jerked into her once more.

Her broken cries were only partly muffled by the cushions, her breath torn from her lungs with each snap of his hips. The speed of his entrance—so unlike his usual caution—was almost the lesser shock compared to the novelty of the position; Hendrik _never_ took her from behind like this, preferring always to be able to look her in the eyes, to press their mouths together, to reach up to caress her breasts. This was not the tender lovemaking or the playful intimacy they had always shared together—this was something dark and heated and altogether _animal_ in its intensity.

“ _Jade_ ,” he moaned, and the sound of his voice had her clenching more tightly around him. It was all she could do to keep up with his relentless pace as he pushed her up against the back of the throne again and again. “Jade, how—how _perfect_ you feel around my cock—how exquisitely you envelop me with your tightness—your _warmth_ —”

She felt his hands at her back, tugging and pulling at the corseted laces of her gown. A moment later, he reached to the front and wrenched her bodice down her chest to expose her breasts. He pawed at them as they swung with each thrust of his hips, pinching and teasing her nipples with his leather-encased fingertips. She gasped his name, almost entirely overwhelmed by the roughness of his passion.

“How does it feel, Princess?” he whispered into her ear. “Do you enjoy being taken by your husband like this? Does it delight you to be used for his pleasure and his alone?”

Jade could only answer with a long groan. The next instant, his hand grabbed her ponytail and pulled her head back—not painfully, but firmly enough to show his seriousness. He met her wide eyes with his hooded ones.

“Well, Princess?” he asked, his expression stern. He wrapped her hair more tightly around his hand and ground his hips into her while he waited for her response.

“Yes!” she cried out. “Yes, I...I love this! I _want_ you to use me, Hendrik, I’ve—I’ve never imagined feeling like this before!"

She saw only a surge of satisfaction cross his face before he covered her mouth with his own. She kissed him back desperately, her sex tightening around him with every stroke of his hot tongue.

When he finally pulled away, she was startled to feel his hands going under her knees and lifting her in the air. Still joined together by his cock between her legs, he spun in place and sat heavily upon the throne, her on his lap facing away from him. He rocked his hips into her and she whimpered as the new position allowed him to bury himself even more deeply inside.

“Now, Princess,” Hendrik panted into her ear. “Now, look out from the throne as you will see it when you are queen.”

A powerful arm went around her waist and pressed her tightly to him as he continued to thrust up into her. It was all she could do to hold on, one hand clutching at his hair behind her.

“On the day that you do, I want you to remember this,” he continued hoarsely. “I want you to remember what it felt like to be taken by your knight, to have him fill you completely as you cried out in pleasure.”

Jade nodded helplessly, too overcome to speak. He grunted then and his movements became erratic. He grabbed one of her hands and brought it down to her sex.

“Touch yourself.” His command was a harsh breath on her skin. “Touch yourself and...and find your release as I do mine...”

She obeyed; what else could she do? Her fingers rubbed frantic circles around that sensitive nub and she moaned and gasped as her desire inched towards its peak once more. Hendrik’s hands went to her waist and pulled her body down as he impaled her on his stiff length.

“ _Hendrik!_ ” she cried out when the rapture of her climax crested. A moment later, she heard his harsh moan stutter into her ear and his hips jerked twice more before stilling. He seemed almost to collapse onto the throne behind her, chest heaving against her back as his head sagged onto her shoulder. The low fires in the braziers crackled and popped as they both struggled to reclaim their senses of self in the wake of such delirious action.

Eventually, her hand went back to his hair, gently stroking through it. He let out a long breath and nuzzled at her neck.

“That was...” Jade paused, struggling gamely to find the words before she was forced to give up. “I can’t say what that was. Ask me in the morning.”

Hendrik huffed a breath against her shoulder. “I can well understand such a request.” She felt the press of his lips, featherlight on her skin. “But...did it please you, at the very least?”

She smiled, and even that small movement was almost too much for her sudden weariness. “Yes,” she assured him. “I was very, _very_ pleased.”

He wrapped his arms more tightly around her and nodded. “I am glad of it.”

After a moment, she let out a short laugh. “We should probably leave before we cause a scandal. It’s a miracle that no one _heard_ us. I...wasn’t exactly keeping to your order there at the end.”

“Ah.” Her husband cleared his throat. “In truth, I had relieved the guards of their duties at an earlier time, to ensure our privacy.”

In an evening of such wildly uncharacteristic behaviour on his part, somehow this set everything to rightness again. “I suppose I should have known.”

When their racing hearts had finally begun to calm, they both reluctantly began to untangle themselves from each other and pull their clothing back into place. Jade held her hair to the side as Hendrik helped her re-tie her gown, and she thanked him with a slow, tender kiss that he readily returned. It had become too much by then for words, and they were silent as they slipped out of the throne room and into the dark hallway beyond, seeking their chambers before anyone was the wiser.

As Jade snuggled into her husband’s side in their bed that night, she could easily have said that she had never been more perfectly happy in her entire twenty-five years of life. The thought was a good one, and it stayed with her as she was lulled off to sleep.

* * *

Hendrik awakened slowly, his eyes heavy and his thoughts muddled. He stared blearily up at the ceiling of the four-poster bed above him before turning his head to one side.

Jade was watching him, her chin propped up in one hand where she lay next to him in the bed. Her lips curved into a smile when their eyes met.

“ _Well_ , Sir Hendrik,” she said.

He blinked once, then again, trying to determine the source of the disquiet that had suddenly bloomed inside his chest. His mouth opened to speak before abruptly snapping shut again. The images from the night previous crept back into him achingly slowly, giving him time to adjust to each remembered transgression before taking his legs out from under him all over again with the next.

There was simply no helping it; he covered his face with his hands in abject _despair_. “Jade, I...I cannot even begin to..."

A gentle touch tugged them away and his eyes flew over to hers.

“I said I’d tell you in the morning what I thought,” she reminded him. There was a teasing light in her gaze that did not help to slow the roil in his stomach.

Jade leaned in closer, her mouth a whisper from his ear. “It was _fantastic_.”

Hendrik’s heart skipped a beat. “T-Truly?”

“Yes.” That breathtaking smile came upon her face once more. “I think it’s safe to say you satisfied _every_ desire your wife could possibly dream of in being ravished— _including_ taking me in a risky place, which I’d frankly given up all hope of.”

She shook her head and brushed a lock of hair back from his cheek. “I don’t know how you finally talked yourself into this, but it was well worth the wait. Thank you.”

Her lips pressed to his in a soft kiss that he only barely managed to return in time.

“I...” Hendrik swallowed hard. “I am ever prepared to go to...to any lengths to ensure your happiness, my love.”

“And you have it,” she told him, curling up at his side and nuzzling her nose against his neck. “ _Especially_ after last night.”

He wrapped his arms around her wonderingly, his heart filled near to bursting with love for this strong, sublime, utterly _baffling_ woman who shared his life. He felt a tiny coil of guilt over his neglect in informing her just _where_ his newfound courage had come from; but the feel of her sighing contentedly as she cuddled up to him quickly banished it from mind.

After a minute, she raised her head to look at him. “I hope you don’t think I expect behaviour like that _all_ the time, though, Hendrik.”

“Ah,” he said, near breathless in his relief. “No, I—of course I would not think so.”

“Good.” Jade laid her head upon his chest, her fingers going up to his pendant. “You could stand to pull my hair a little more and I _did_ enjoy the new position, but the rest? Perhaps just for special occasions.”

That teasing tone entered her voice again. “I seem to recall that my birthday _is_ coming up next month, you know.”

And it was then that Hendrik realized that even after the fulfillment of his solemn duty, even with the perfect home he had found, the perfect companion, the perfect _life_ ; there might yet always be something worth worrying over.

* * *

_~~Initiate marital relations in such a place as to put us at risk of discovery.~~ _

* * *

When Don Rodrigo brought the newest class of trainee knights to the castle several weeks later, Hendrik was exceedingly grateful that his son had decided to come along with him.

“Oh! I’m _so_ happy to see you, Henny-Wenny!” Sylvando enthused when he spotted his friend lurking in the hallway outside the stables. “Now where’s my favourite princess so we can bring this all together in a nice big group hug, hm?”

“She remains inside—but first I must ask a moment of your time.” Hendrik grabbed the man by the arm and hauled him into a nearby stairwell. Sylvando blinked with confusion as the other knight furtively looked around to ensure they were alone.

“So what’s _this_ all about, darling?” he asked with an arched eyebrow.

Hendrik coughed into his fist. “I...I wished to ask if you had were in possession of yet more of that potion you gave to me at the villa.”

Sylvando’s mouth broadened in a smile and his hands flew up to his cheeks. “Oh! Don’t tell me it actually _worked_ , Hendrik honey!”

“I was able to obtain the...necessary results,” Hendrik admitted, even just _this_ much detail setting his face aflame. “But now the princess has requested a—a repeat performance for her birthday, and I wish not to disappoint her.”

“Oh, of course, of course.” The other man’s eyes narrowed slyly. “But you know, darling, it’d be just as easy for _you_ to make it yourself.”

Hendrik looked up, his mouth agape in his excitement. “Truly? And by what manner is the potion brewed?” he asked with all possible eagerness.

Sylvando’s tone was innocent as he began counting off on his long fingers. “It’s simple, really—take a cup of water, mix some buzzberry juice into it, add a drop of food colouring, and tada!” He made a grand flourish with his hand.

To say that it took several beats for Hendrik to realize the implications of the man’s words would be doing a disservice to the skill of drummers everywhere.

“You...you mean to say..." His hand flew up to his temple and he took a staggered step backwards. “Th-this was all merely...a _hoax?_ ”

“I _told_ you that you just needed to get out of your own head, honey,” Sylvando chided him as he wrapped a comforting arm around his friend’s shoulders. “But isn’t it better this way? The power to satisfy your wonderful wifey was inside _you_ all along. You don’t need some silly little _potion_ for that, now do you?”

Hendrik’s teeth began to grind together as the sheer, unbridled incense rose within him. “I—I cannot believe that in a trusted friend’s—a brother _knight’s_ —hour of need, you would so carelessly, _recklessly_ —”

Sylvando practically skipped out of the reach of the other man’s lunge. “Whoopsie, I think I hear Papi calling for me! Gotta go!”

As Hendrik scrambled into the hallway to give chase, he suddenly skidded to a halt, his stomach plummeting down to his very toes.

Jade stood before him, her arms crossed ominously. Upon her face was an expression that Hendrik had only before seen directed towards metal slimes who had thwarted her Lightning Thrust.

“Had a nice little chat with Sylvando, did you?” she asked with exaggerated calmness. “I do hope you had enough time to catch him up on _all_ the details of our love life.”

Hendrik’s throat worked soundlessly before he managed to find his voice. “P-Princess, I—”

“And I had no _idea_ you took such an interest in potion-making!” she continued, a slight edge entering her tone. “You should have mentioned something—I would have written Serena and requested she send a kit.”

Frozen in his dismay, Hendrik’s jaw clenched in trembling tension as his wife sidled up to him and deliberately pulled down on one arm even as she pushed up on her toes.

“I changed my mind about my birthday,” she whispered in his ear; a shiver went down his spine at the puff of her breath on his skin. “If _anyone_ deserves to have a little punishment inflicted upon them, it’s _definitely_ not going to be me.”

Realizing the impossibility of retreat or redress, Hendrik’s shoulders slumped and he deflated where he stood. Two words and two words only sprang to his mind, the words of thoroughly conquered husbands the world over:

“Yes, dear,” he said hoarsely.


End file.
